


the more we move ahead the more we're stuck in rewind

by shinealightonme



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Blake Sibling Bond, Found Family, Gen, Graduation, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Road Trips, Summer Vacation, The Delinquents, minty if you squinty, oh so many hugs, okay I think it's gen but my beta says it's "as platonic as JRoth" so take that how you will, pre-relationship Bellarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 05:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11201184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: Sure, the road trip started as an accident, but that doesn't mean it has to turn out badly. Everything is going to go according to plan and everyone is going to have fun before college. Clarke isdetermined.





	the more we move ahead the more we're stuck in rewind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for infinitegladness in thanks for a generous contribution to the Fandom Trumps Hate auction! I sincerely hope you enjoy it and am so grateful for your wonderful prompts.
> 
> Thanks to talldecafcappuccino and her intense side eyes for the beta read.

Swear to God, but Clarke didn't mean to crash the Blake family road trip.

The worst part is, if it had been anyone else's post-graduation vacation plans that she'd invited herself to, Bellamy would have given her crap about how her entitlement was showing.

But he never defends his own boundaries half as well as he defends anyone else's, so the damage is done before Clarke realizes that she's trespassed.

Honestly, all she said was "Going to California? Sounds fun," and she only said it because Bellamy had a road map -- an actual, physical, I've-never-heard-of-Google, one-million-creases-I'll-never-be-able-to-fold-it-shut-the-correct-way-again road map -- open on the cafeteria table, and a bleak expression on his face like he was hoping someone would come save him from himself.

That's Clarke's siren song. She can't _not_ save Bellamy from himself.

"Oh, yeah, it's going to be a total riot," Octavia says. Her voice is the opposite of excited. "We're both really looking forward to it."

"Mind if I sit here?" Clarke asks, and Bellamy tugs the map into an upright position blocking his face, like it's a newspaper and he's a middle-aged dad ignoring his children at the breakfast table.

Later, Clarke will remember this moment and hold it up to her own scrutiny: _I asked for permission. I tried. My intentions were good_.

"We're figuring out our post-graduation plans," Bellamy says.

"Road trip? Isn't that sort of cliché?"

"Well, I already did the _boy from the wrong side of the tracks befriends snotty rich girl_ thing -- " Bellamy starts.

Clarke rolls her eyes and swaps half of her Caesar wrap for the remains of his turkey sandwich. "Shut up, Judd Nelson."

"This isn't a John Hughes movie," Octavia snaps. "You're three decades late and neither of you is that likable."

Clarke doesn't blink. "I'm likable."

"Don't get carried away," Bellamy says. Clarke can't see his face behind the road map; there's no telling if he means her or Octavia until he adds, "you're more tolerable than likable."

"To borrow one of your old people phrases, _gag me with a spoon_." Octavia grabs her tray and stands up. "I'm getting out of here before the Bellamy and Clarke love fest starts."

"Don't go," Clarke says hastily. She and Octavia occupy a weird space around each other these days. They'd been in art class together last year, when Clarke was a junior and Octavia was a freshman, and Clarke had thought they got along pretty well. She can still remember that there was a time when Octavia was _the good Blake_ , even though she can't remember what that was like, exactly.

But Clarke has gotten closer to Bellamy and further away from Octavia. She's not sure if there's a causal relationship between those two facts.

"I'll get out of your hair," she promises Octavia. "I just wanted to make fun of Bellamy for his blatant scheme to ogle beach babes."

"You act like we don't have bikinis here," Bellamy says.

"Yeah, on the three days of summer that Seattle gets." Clarke stands up. They make a strange isosceles triangle, she and Octavia standing around Bellamy like guards at the throne, like statues outside a tomb. "I'm not saying you're wrong. Hell, I'm jealous. I'd love to ogle California babes with you."

"Why don't you, then?" Octavia asks. "You should come along. You can point out all the hotties that Bellamy misses."

There's something weird about her voice when she says it.

"O," Bellamy warns her. He heard it too.

"No, I'm serious." Octavia smiles brilliantly at Clarke. It's a good smile. But then, Octavia had beat out all of the upperclassmen for Viola in _Twelfth Night_ that spring. Clarke doesn't give too much credence to what Octavia looks to be thinking at any point in time. "Don't you think this trip will be _so much fun_ if Clarke tags along?"

Clarke is definitely missing some context to this conversation, if Octavia has gone from not wanting to eat lunch with her to wanting to take a vacation together.

Bellamy lowers the road map. "Clarke doesn't want to go on our road trip."

"Yeah, I'm going to be way too busy, packing for college and Skyping with Wells and arguing with my mom -- "

"So you don't have any real plans," Octavia says. "Bell, weren't you saying how anyone without real plans should get out of town?"

Bellamy and Octavia glare at each other.

Clarke does a cost-benefit analysis on bonking them both over the head with her lunch tray. She'd spill her food, but they might start making sense.

"Clarke doesn't want to go to San Diego," Bellamy says again, a concrete fact, and Clarke feels stung. Because who wouldn't want to go to San Diego with their friends on summer vacation?

Because why does Bellamy get to speak for her, when, any time she would attempt the same, he'd correct her?

Because there's something going on that Bellamy isn't telling her, and that pisses her off.

"I'd love to go to San Diego." Clarke beams at Octavia. She never had time for drama club amid her myriad of college-dazzling extracurriculars, but she killed at mock trial. She knows how to win an argument. "It sounds like fun."

"Great!" Knowing it's phony doesn't decrease the charm of hearing bubbly, effusive Octavia agree with her. She sounds so much like when they were in art class making ugly clay pots together, when Octavia still did beam like that, for real and not just an act.

Or maybe it was always an act.

"So Clarke's coming with us to San Diego." Octavia's smile is a weapon. "Unless you can think of some reason why she shouldn't, Bell."

Bellamy glares at her. But he's surrounded by Clarke and Octavia, the two girls in his life that he doesn't say no to, not without a damn good reason.

Clarke wants him to say no to her. She just wants him to tell her the reason, first.

Instead, he shrugs. "Whatever. But remember, Griffin. Gas, grass, or ass, no one rides free."

"You're disgusting, Blake." Clarke's disappointed. With Bellamy for caving, with Octavia for browbeating him, with herself for ganging up with Octavia when she didn't know why they were doing it.

"Is it _make fun of Bellamy day_ already?" Miller asks, crashing into the seat next to Octavia. "I thought that was Monday-Wednesday-Friday."

"Every day is _make fun of Bellamy day_." Raven sits across from Miller, swiping a chip off Clarke's tray on the way down. "Unanimous motion at the last _make fun of Bellamy_ coalition meeting."

"You never send me the minutes for those," Miller complains.

"Who takes minutes," Raven scoffs. "Watch the damn live stream if you can't make it to a meeting."

The tension dissipates. Clarke slowly lowers herself back onto the bench and watches as Octavia does the same.

"What's with the _map_?" Raven asks. "Did you get a virus on your phone? Because I'm not fixing that. Stop watching porn on your phone."

"Yeah, watch porn on a library computer like a normal person." Miller grabs for the map.

Bellamy, in the middle of folding up the map, hits Miller on the head with it like he's disciplining a puppy.

"Don't _defile_ the _library_ ," Bellamy says. "They're the only real sacred spaces that our society has _left_."

Four pairs of eyes roll.

"Miller wouldn't do it for real," Raven says. "He's probably into weird shit that he doesn't want anyone to know about."

"Like you can talk. You would fuck a robot."

"Who wouldn't fuck a robot?"

Clarke thinks about saying _I wouldn't_ , but Raven would only accuse her of killing the joke, so she tries to play along. "I think Miller's big secret is that he's totally vanilla. Like he unironically thinks of sex as 'making love'."

Raven considers this for three milliseconds. "No, he's definitely into some kinky shit."

"Clowns," Octavia suggests. "All clown sex, all the time."

Bellamy narrows his eyes. "You're not allowed to talk about sex while I'm here. It's creepy."

"Wow. Way to make this feel like a safe space for me to explore my personality without being judged. I can't wait to be cooped in a van with you for a week."

"Going on a road trip?" Raven asks. "Or is locking people in a car Bellamy's new idea of sibling bonding experience?"

"Road trip, us and Clarke," Octavia says, before Bellamy can refute it or Clarke can second-guess herself. Well, not before Clarke can second-guess herself; that process started immediately. Before she can act on her doubts. "You guys want to come with?"

"Raven's got a summer job," Bellamy says.

Raven cheerfully flips him off. "Raven's got a mouth she can use to say no for herself. Also, a break. Internship doesn't start until after the 4th."

"Your boss is a hippie," Miller tells her. "I'm going to tell him to make you work harder."

"Yup," Raven agrees, "because that's what bosses do, listen to random teenagers telling them how to run their departments."

"If he were a real hippie, he wouldn't celebrate the jingoistic parade that is American Independence Day," Clarke says. "Or he'd call it, like, Free Love Day."

"Don't take this the wrong way," Raven says. "But you should never invent a holiday. You suck at it."

Clarke hopes her smile doesn't look as brittle as it feels. "What exactly is the right way to take that?"

Raven stares at her for a heartbeat longer than Clarke is comfortable with. "I don't know, you're the Ivy Leaguer, you figure it out." As though Raven's not going to MIT.

Raven's going to MIT. Miller's going to Berkeley. Bellamy's staying in Seattle to go to UW.

It isn't the first time that Clarke's had a moment like this, the crashing realization that her friends are all splitting up, might go months without seeing each other or having a real conversation. Might never have a real conversation again.

So it should be getting easier, this despair. She should be developing coping strategies.

But it's not, and she isn't.

Her eyes flick over to Bellamy. His face is shut down, no help at all.

Then a crack in the armor: one corner of his mouth lifts up in a smile.

"I'm a future Ivy Leaguer," Clarke reminds Raven. "I haven't started yet. I assume that when I come back for Christmas I'll know everything and be a thousand times smarter than all of you."

Raven snorts. "Yeah, where _smarter_ equals _more pretentious_."

"Oh God, Griffin's going to get even more obnoxious, isn't she?" Miller covers his eyes with one hand and turns his face away, like he can't stand to look at her. "We're going to spend all of Christmas break getting you back down to _baseline Griffin_ and then you're going to go back to college and relapse. Probably start drinking lattes with edible gold in them or some shit."

"What do you care," Clarke tells him. "You're going to come back from Berkeley a freegan."

"Then I'll really be offended."

"Quit squabbling, children," Bellamy says in his bored dad voice. "You're all equally terrible in your own unique ways."

"I'm glad this road trip hasn't started yet and you're already sick of us," Raven says.

"Seeing as how the road trip hasn't started yet, you could still back out," Bellamy says.

"And let the terrorists win?" Miller scoffs.

Raven does that _head tilt squint up at you_ thing, like she's looking over the top of glasses she isn't wearing.

They probably think that Bellamy is just his usual faux-grumpy self.

Clarke wonders, gnawing on her own lip in guilt, if he isn't trying to ask them to back out without having to ask.

But then Monty drops into the seat next to Miller, looking like someone shot his dog in front of him while spoiling _The Last Jedi_ , and no amount of personal distress is going to stop Bellamy from swooping in to do something about that.

"Class go okay?" Bellamy asks, his voice gruff like it gets when he pretends he's not caring.

"If it didn't," Raven says, "we're out of here in three days, it doesn't matter. Unless you killed a teacher."

"And if you did kill a teacher, we'll come up with an alibi for you," Miller adds.

"No, nothing like that." Monty stabs the cheese-and-noodle-food-product on his plate without eating any of it. "My summer plans just imploded, that's all."

It's amazing, how Clarke can pinpoint the exact moment Bellamy surrenders. Something in his eyes gives it away.

"Boy, have I got news for you," he tells Monty.

-

Getting Abby to agree to _six teenagers with no chaperone driving a thousand miles in a van_ is an act of diplomacy, resolve, and ingenuity that ought to earn Clarke an ambassadorship to the country of her choosing.

What it actually earns her is a week with five of her friends and no chaperone driving a thousand miles in a van. Which is even better.

Monty's parents require some persuasion, though nothing like Abby. Apparently the thing that swayed them the most was that Clarke was going to be there.

"I think they count you as a chaperone," Monty says. They've gathered at Clarke's house to prep for graduation, which doesn't stops them from talking shit about each other. It just means they look over their shoulders for Clarke's mom every few seconds while they do it. "They don't realize that you're the most destructive of us all."

"Clarke Griffin: secret bad influence," Miller says.

"That's the one thing we really like about you," Raven says. Neither of them had reported any parental troubles. Miller because his dad trusts him and respects his choices. Raven because she probably didn't tell her mom; because her mom may not notice she's missing.

"Wow," Clarke says. "There's one whole thing you like about me. I feel so appreciated."

"You should be!" Monty pipes up. "There's got to be at least three whole things we like about you."

Clarke smiles. "I'm almost afraid to ask what the other two are."

"One: highest alcohol tolerance of any tiny white girl in history," Miller says promptly. "Two: gives hell to people who need hell given to them."

"Aren't those both covered by _secret bad influence_?" Monty asks.

"Probably," Raven says. "Little Blake, get over here and help me with this stupid gown."

"I have a _name_." Octavia makes no move to get up from the couch. She's the odd one out, two years away from her own graduation, and she's chosen to spend the entire time she's in Clarke's house glaring at her phone.

"Yeah, you do. Little Blake."

"Jesus, O, get your feet off the couch," Bellamy says as he enters the room. Clarke is pretty sure his graduation gown is on backwards, but it's hard to focus on that when his hair is a disaster and he's got a wild look in his eyes.

"You're not my dad," Octavia says.

"You're a guest," he snaps at her. "You ought to respect the Griffins' stuff."

"Sure. Whatever." Octavia swings her feet to the ground, brushing the soles of her shoes against the arm of the couch as she does so.

Bellamy looks ready to explode.

Clarke grabs his arm. "Your hair's a mess, come on." He resists, so she adds, for his ears only, "There's nothing you can say to Octavia right now that's going to help. And Mom gets the furniture cleaned every year anyway."

He sags against her grip, lets her tow him to her bathroom upstairs.

"Seriously, what did you do to your hair?" Clarke runs her fingers through his hair, as Bellamy reluctantly bends down to help her reach. "It feels like you dumped a gallon of slime over your head. Did you guest star on a kids' game show on the way over?"

"I wanted to look nice."

"I didn't realize that was so hard for you to accomplish."

Bellamy doesn't answer immediately. She's expecting him to come up with some biting response: _it takes a lot of work to create a masterpiece,_ or, _you wouldn't understand about looking nice_.

Instead, he says, "No one ever thought I was going to make it this far."

Bellamy and Octavia didn't have to talk any overprotective parents into letting them road trip; they'd probably have preferred that to the last year spent in foster care, to the decade and a half before that with a mom who was never around.

Clarke doesn't know all of the ins and outs of Bellamy's childhood. She's only known him for the last four years, only been close with him for the last two. But she knows it was rough. She knows that he and Octavia both had scrapes with the law. She knows that he did things he's ashamed of, had things happen to him that he wished hadn't.

She told him once that he could talk to her about anything, and he'd told her, as open and raw as she'd ever seen, that he preferred that she didn't know the details. That he felt like she got the important parts anyway. She'd never make him share anything he didn't want to. But it means, sometimes, she has blind spots.

She never thought that Bellamy doubted this part of himself.

"I knew you would," she says.

He grins up at her, crooked. Her fingers are still in his hair. "You told me in freshman English that I was a fraud."

"You wrote your section of our group project in iambic pentameter! Who the hell does that? That meant that I had to do _my_ section in iambic pentameter. I was _pissed_."

"Shouldn't let people get under your skin so easily," Bellamy says.

"If you keep criticizing me, I'm not going to help you fix your hair. People are going to take a thousand photos today and you're going to look like a salon exploded on you."

"I don't see how this is supposed to prove you're good at taking criticism."

"Shut up and grab a comb."

Bellamy looks half-way presentable by the time Abby sticks her head through the door to Clarke's bathroom.

Of course, this would be the moment that Clarke is tugging Bellamy's gown up and around the correct way. Clarke can practically see Abby's blood pressure skyrocket at the sight of her daughter undressing a boy.

Clarke had hoped coming out as bisexual would make her mom realize the arbitrariness of gender-segregating sleepovers and curfews. In practice, it just means that Abby panics when Clarke is alone in a room with _anyone_. Which is a lot better than some problems you could have after coming out to your mom, but it's still annoying as hell.

She should get an _award_ for getting Abby to agree to the road trip.

"Bellamy, good to see you again." Abby always manages to sound like she's not checking up on Clarke when she's checking up on Clarke. "Congratulations."

"Thank you, Dr. Griffin." Bellamy is always incredibly polite to Clarke's mom, which is partly his default behavior around people's parents and is partly a calculated decision to annoy Clarke.

"Are we going to see you at the party tonight?"

"Yeah, I'll be here. Thanks for hosting us. And thanks for letting us all come over to get ready." Now Bellamy's laying it on thick even by his standards.

"High school isn't easy. I think you've all earned some fun." Abby hesitates, then gives in to her baser mom instincts. "But not too much fun. Especially when you're driving. You have a license, right?"

" _Mom_."

"It's fine." Clarke's not sure if that's directed at her or Abby. Maybe both. Bellamy Blake's superpower is _handling the Griffin women_. "I take my responsibility for my sister very seriously. I wouldn't do anything that would put her in danger."

Abby nods, mollified. Maybe Bellamy is the real reason she conceded to Clarke's demands. If Clarke is a secret bad influence, Bellamy is a secret good influence.

"Are you two ready?" Abby asked. "Your friends want to take pictures before we head over to the school."

Clarke tugs Bellamy's gown down the rest of the way. "I think that's as good as you're going to get."

"Thanks for making me pretty," Bellamy says, deadpan.

"I'm a miracle worker."

There's a flurry of photographs and driving and running through campus because they spent a little too much time making Bellamy pretty and are now late, and then there's a lot of hurry up and wait as they sit through the excruciatingly boring graduation ceremony.

Clarke, at least, has Monty by her side, because sometimes the alphabet gods smile on her. They're smiling on Miller, too; John Murphy is nowhere to be seen, which means that Miller gets to sit next to that Riley kid and Clarke doesn't have to spend the entire ceremony worrying that a fight will break out seven rows behind her. She gets to spend most of it worrying about her valedictorian speech, instead.

"Don't worry," Monty whispers, as the principal drones on interminably and Clarke clenches her nails into her palms hard enough to draw blood. "No one's going to pay attention to what you say."

"That doesn't make me feel better."

Bellamy is the first of Clarke's friends to cross the stage. Clarke lets out the shockingly loud wolf whistle she has been practicing for this exact occasion. From back in the R's she hears Raven shout " _Damn_ , boy, you take that diploma!" 

The principal has to remind everyone to keep their applause respectful. Clarke is prouder at that moment than she is when it's her turn to cross the stage.

-

"Man, I thought I saw the last of this ugly bus when we got too old for co-ed soccer teams," Miller complains.

"Don't lie," Clarke says. "You know you love my aquamarine van."

 _Aquamarine_ is a generous term for it. Her dad's old van is some hideous shade of after-market neon that ought to be outlawed as a traffic hazard. Clarke hasn't missed it anymore than Miller has. No one has regularly driven it since Jake died, but Abby kept it in the garage out of...sentimentality, maybe, or else she hadn't found anyone willing to buy it from her. It's hideous.

It's also the only vehicle between the six of them that can comfortably fit all of them and their luggage, with the exception of Bellamy's van. Bellamy's van is not neon, but he bought it off a guy on craigslist for three hundred dollars and doesn't let Octavia set foot in it because he's pretty sure it will explode if you look at it wrong, so it was never a real contender.

Part of Abby's terms for the road trip were that Clarke take Jake's old van, since it has been serviced in the last ten years and has never been graffitied by drunken frat boys with the words FREE CANDY. That was not a hard concession for Clarke to make.

There was another concession that Abby demanded before she would sign off. Clarke had worried Bellamy would balk at this one, so she'd grabbed him and pulled him aside during the middle of her graduation party.

"If you're going to ask me to elope, you should have done it before I made my first tuition payment," Bellamy grumbles as Clarke pulls him into the laundry room. "Eternal love is one thing, but UW owns me at this point."

"Yeah, dream on," Clarke says. "But speaking of financial obligations..."

Bellamy raises an eyebrow.

She waits for him to tell her that was a shitty segue, but he doesn't. Because he knows that she's waiting for him to give her that out, so he won't give it to her, because she deserves to suffer for giving him a shitty segue.

Or because he's an asshole. Either way.

"My mom wants to pay for the road trip."

"Well, yeah, you don't have a job, so -- " Bellamy interrupts himself with a frown. "She wants to pay for _you_?"

"She wants to pay for everyone," Clarke says. "Or, she said she'd cover gas -- she gave me her credit card. And she's chipping in for hotels."

"Usually people don't sound so apologetic for giving me a bunch of money," Bellamy says. His tone is light, but Clarke's not fooled; she can see the tension creep into his shoulders. "Okay, no one has ever given me a bunch of money. But I have a recurring dream where I win a reality tv show and the host usually sounds a lot more peppy."

"Really? What tv show?"

"I dunno, sometimes it's a cooking show. Like Alton Brown is there. One time it was RuPaul's Drag Race."

"I need to know absolutely everything that happened in this dream." Bellamy continues to scowl at her. "Later, I guess. Sorry that you don't get to demand a bunch of gas money from people."

"Yeah, if I thought that's what you were sorry about I wouldn't be bothering you." Bellamy rubs a hand over his face. "What, your mom decided to make me and O her charity case?"

Clarke hesitates, because it's not like the truth is much better. "She figured, the kinds of places that six teenagers could afford to stay would be -- sketchy."

"Sketchy."

"Not safe."

"God forbid the precious scion of the Griffin family stay in a motel."

"I know money makes things awkward," Clarke starts. Her voice comes out hotter and less steady than she'd like. She doesn't want to fight her mom's battles. Yet this keeps happening, where she ends up arguing with the people she'd rather be siding with. "But if none of us have to use our budget toward gas, and we get a subsidy on lodgings, then it's more money for things we _want_ to spend money on. And we can stay at a Best Western instead of a no-name motel under a freeway overpass."

"Have you ever seen a no-name motel under a freeway overpass?" Bellamy asks. "Or just in a documentary about the less fortunate?"

It's shitty, because she doesn't want to stay in whatever crappy motels the six of them can afford on their own, but she didn't like the way Abby had brought it up, either. Didn't like the implication that anything the Blakes could afford wasn't good enough for her.

"I know this is weird," Clarke says again. "I can't apologize for my mother in a meaningful way, because _sorry my mom is a snob_ isn't a real apology -- "

That earns a little smile from Bellamy.

" -- so what can I do to make it okay?"

"You're already bought my friendship." Bellamy says it like a joke, but it stings. "Now you want to buy my forgiveness, too?"

"It's going to be really uncomfortable spending a week in a car with you if we're not speaking."

Bellamy considers this. "Okay. We'll stay together for the children's sake. But I'm going to resent you the whole time."

"Deal," Clarke says.

Bellamy actually reaches out to shake her hand.

"Do you ever worry that we're going to turn out to be warped people with unhealthy relationships?" Clarke asks.

"Honestly at this point I'm counting on it."

"Yeah, okay," and that mostly reassured Clarke that things were going to be fine.

She's still a little nervous, explaining the money situation to everyone else the next morning. She wasn't expecting anyone else to take it as hard as Bellamy had, but no one loves being condescended to.

But Miller just says, "Sweet, I'm going to buy so many shitty souvenirs now."

"No, you're not," Bellamy objects, for the sake of being contrary.

"Why not? If I don't have to pay for gas."

"We still have to fit all our shit in the car," Bellamy says. "You don't get to buy so much stuff that there's no room for the rest of us."

"If it gets to that, we'll leave you at a truck stop," Miller tells him. "You like walking hundreds of miles, right?"

Clarke shoots an anxious glance at Raven. She hasn't said anything, but her finances aren't much better than Bellamy's.

Raven is already looking at her, and there's no looking away without getting caught.

Raven smiles, and it looks bitter. But all she says is, "If the Bank of Abby is open for business, I say we take advantage."

"Does this mean that Bellamy's _gas grass or ass_ policy doesn't hold?" Monty asks.

"Hell no." Miller drapes an arm over his shoulders. "If you have weed you have to share. Unless you'd rather put out."

"Wait, do you really have weed?" Octavia perks up.

"NO WEED IN THE VAN," Bellamy and Clarke say in perfect unison.

Raven smirks. "Guess that means Monty's putting out."

Between the money talk and making a stop at Monty's so he can return his stash to its hiding place, they hit the road about a half hour later than Clarke planned.

"All right," Clarke says, once Bellamy has gotten them on the freeway. She turns around in the passenger seat to look at her friends: Raven and Octavia in the second row, Raven stretching out her bad leg; Miller and Monty in the backseat, Miller looking over Monty's shoulder as he plays a game on his DS. "First order of business, we get past Tacoma and Olympia -- "

"Ugh, we're driving through Tacoma?" Miller wrinkles his nose. "I changed my mind, I want out."

"Overruled," Bellamy says.

" -- head west and get on the Pacific Coast Highway," Clarke continues. Standard operating procedure for her and Bellamy; one of them talks and the other one squashes interruptions. "Less direct than I-5 but it'll be a lot nicer. We get through Washington and Oregon today, most of California tomorrow, and that leaves us some driving on the third day but we'll also have time to hit the beach when we get to San Diego. And if we see anything along the way we want to stop at, we'll stop."

"It's cute how Clarke is pretending she doesn't already have every stop planned," Raven says to Octavia.

Octavia looks out the window, with no indication she's listening to the conversation.

Clarke does, in fact, have an itinerary in her daypack, along with Bellamy's road map, a rough time table for who is driving what shifts, the best towns to stop for the night based on mileage, and possible hotels in each of those towns that are in their Abby-adjusted price range. She felt a little paranoid printing that all out at home, but if it isn't _likely_ that all six of their phones would be dead at any given point in time, it isn't _impossible_. They could lose reception.

"Not _every_ stop," Clarke says. "This is your guys' vacation too. You should have input on what we do."

"And if our input isn't good enough, Clarke will give us her _you can do better_ face and we'll go along with whatever she wanted us to do in the first place," Bellamy says. He's driving, so he has his hands at ten and two and he isn't so much as turning his head five degrees or looking at them in the rearview mirror, but he is paying attention.

"As long as we get to stop at some creepy rundown tourist traps I'm happy," Miller says.

"As long as no one pukes on me I'll call this a win," Raven adds.

"Way to keep those ambitions manageable," Bellamy tells her.

"Shoot for the ground," Monty says. "Even if you miss, you'll land in a ditch."

"We don't have to stick to my schedule," Clarke says. "It's just a starting point."

"We get that you like to plan things out," Monty tells her. "We don't mind. It saves us from having to make any decisions if you plan everything."

Clarke settles back into her seat, feeling marginally better. "I didn't plan _everything_."

"Sure," Octavia pipes up. Clarke thinks that it might be the start of something, and braces herself for -- a rant, an accusation, an insult. Octavia's been distant since the plans for the road trip were finalized, and Clarke wonders if it's about to come to a head.

But Octavia leaves off there, keeps staring out the window.

If she really could plan everything, Clarke would figure out how to deal with Octavia.

-

They make it through Tacoma no problem, and then they're on the stretch between Tacoma and Olympia, and it's drizzling, and Clarke spots a hitchhiker.

She didn't think that anyone went hitchhiking outside of movies. Apparently they do; apparently hitchhikers exist in the same space as no-name motels under freeway overpasses, things that Clarke Griffin only hears about as cautionary tales.

The thought makes her feel guilty, and the guilt makes her want to pick him up. Surely with six of them versus one hitchhiker, they wouldn't be in danger. And it's raining.

She looks over at Bellamy and sees that he's making the same calculation in his head.

But then Raven says, "Holy shit, that's _Murphy_ ," and Clarke looks back out the windshield to see yes, it is. They're not close enough to make out his face, but he's wearing that obnoxious leather jacket with the shoulder spikes, like a knock off Mad Max, and there can't be more than one of those in Washington state.

"Run him over," Miller calls from the backseat.

Bellamy scowls, and they get close enough to see for sure that it's John Murphy. He's not looking at their car, not looking at any car in particular, just trudging along the side of the road with his thumb out.

He looks like he knows that no one is going to stop for him.

They pass him, and then Bellamy swears, hits his turn signal and pulls onto the shoulder.

"Are we really doing this?" Miller asks.

Clarke and Bellamy share a look.

"Yes," Clarke says, and that's it, settled. No one objects, but Raven does mutter, "I'm not sitting next to him. Or sharing a hotel room with him. Or talking to him."

"Noted," Clarke answers, and then Murphy comes up on the driver side of the van.

Bellamy has already rolled his window down. Rain is splashing on the van's interior, on Bellamy's arm. But it's not like it's a nice van. And Bellamy can stand a little rain. Murphy's been walking in it for who knows how long.

"Blake?" Murphy asks. "And Griffin. Great. Someone finally pulls over and it's just so they can _moralize_ at me."

"Get in," Bellamy says.

Murphy stares at him. "What?"

"Get in," Bellamy says again. "You'll have to sit in the back," and when Murphy doesn't move, Bellamy adds, "I'm getting rained on here, asshole, either get in the van or let us drive off."

Murphy gets in the van.

He has to step over Octavia to do it, which is awkward, but probably better than if he'd tried to get in on Raven's side. Octavia acts like everyone is unpleasant; Raven has a grudge against Murphy specifically.

There's some kind of nonverbal communication in the backseat, and then Monty ends up sitting on Miller's lap so Murphy can get around him and sit by the window. Monty slowly scoots back into the middle seat. Clarke wonders if he's reluctant to sit by Murphy and too polite to say anything, or he if didn't want to stop sitting on Miller's lap. Either way spells trouble for her plans of a harmonious group outing.

Really, there's no situation in which _Murphy_ and _harmony_ are going to coexist.

But what could they do, leave him in the rain?

Clarke looks at Bellamy again to reaffirm her choices, but Bellamy is looking out the window, merging back onto the freeway. She figures that leaves her the acting grown-up.

"Where are you headed?" Clarke asks.

"Anywhere but here," Murphy drawls. "Why do you want to know?"

"I'm new at this whole 'picking up hitchhikers' thing, but I assume there's a part where we negotiate where we're driving you to. Unless you're trying to get kidnapped."

"I'm going as far as I can get someone to take me," Murphy says.

Clarke is abruptly tired of his _tough guy_ bullshit. She's about to tell him exactly where he can go, when Bellamy clears his throat, quiet enough only Clarke can hear it.

"We've got a couple days driving ahead of us," Bellamy says. "You want off at any point, tell us when."

"Are you going to turn this car around if I don't play nice?" Murphy asks.

"Yeah, it's funny that you think we'd ruin our vacation to spite you," Miller says.

"We'd just take you outside and kick your ass," Raven adds.

"Great, I was worried that you guys stopping meant you were good people," Murphy said. "Glad I don't have to raise my opinion of any of you."

They hit traffic and don't stop for lunch until it's nearly two in the afternoon. It wouldn't be that bad -- she and Bellamy packed enough Power Bars to get them through anything short of a Donner Party event -- but Clarke doesn't think she's imagining that the mood in the van has taken a decidedly dark turn. 

"I hate to say this, General," Bellamy mutters to her, as they sit in the restaurant's largest booth, pretending to consult the map. "But troop morale is low."

"I know." Clarke bites her lip and shoots a quick glance up. Everyone else is at the counter of the little sandwich shop they'd found on Yelp with wildly inconsistent reviews; Miller had dubbed it _food roulette_. "We had to stop."

"I know." Bellamy rubs a hand over his face. "Fuck. I hope he doesn't plan on riding all the way down to San Diego with us."

"Maybe he'll take a hint and politely bow out," Clarke says.

Bellamy looks at her.

"What? A girl can dream," Clarke says. "She just can't plan her entire strategy around it."

"So what's the backup plan?" Bellamy asks.

"Preventative action first. I have a private conversation with him and stress that he needs to not act like a jackass to Raven."

"He can be a jackass to everyone else?"

"I'm going for achievable goals. _Don't be a jackass to anyone_ doesn't feel achievable."

"Yeah, okay. And after that?"

"After that, if he steps out of line, we've got a better position to give him a warning or kick him out, depending on the situation. I don't want to kick him out," Clarke adds, at the look on Bellamy's face. "But I will if we have to. It's not like he'd be in a worse position than he was in if we hadn't stopped at all."

Bellamy nods. "One change to the plan."

Clarke's instinct is to bristle, but Bellamy wouldn't nitpick for no reason. "Yeah?"

"Let me talk to him, first," Bellamy says.

"You think he'd listen to you better than he'd listen to me?"

"We were kind of friends, freshman year," Bellamy points out.

"Yeah, so he's got more baggage with you. He and I were never friends, it's much less emotionally charged if I set the boundaries."

"I think _emotionally charged_ is the way to get through to him."

"If you think it's best." It's not like Clarke was looking forward to the _when you're in my van you'll follow my rules_ conversation. She's had her share of patronizing her peers.

There's a cart down the block from the sandwich shop selling those maple candies that Clarke always thinks of as a Canadian thing, and Monty and Miller gravitate over to it without any prompting. The girls follow, and Clarke watches out of the corner of her eye as Bellamy pulls Murphy to hang back.

By the time Bellamy and Murphy catch up to them, Monty has eaten seven maple leaf shaped candies and Murphy has a murderous look on his face.

"You're going to make yourself sick," Raven tells Monty with relish.

"If you puke, do it on Murphy," Miller tells him.

Murphy looks like he's about to throw down, and Clarke thinks regretfully, _well, at least we got him past Olympia_ , but Monty pipes up, "Why would I do that? We'd all have to smell it. I'd puke in a barf bag."

"You have a barf bag?" Octavia asks. It's the first sign Clarke's gotten that she was listening to any of their conversation since they picked up Murphy.

"I assume our eternally prepared leaders packed a few," Monty says.

"Oh, please tell me you're not that anal," Raven tells Clarke.

"They're not _barf bags_ , exactly," and in the mockery that follows, enough tension slips out of Murphy and Bellamy that Clarke can breathe easily, even as she explains, "I brought some plastic grocery bags just in case, that's not _weird_ ," which sets off more mockery and assurances that yes, yes that is weird.

-

Clarke fakes a bathroom emergency an hour after lunch ends. It means fielding a lot of teasing, several iterations of _but you always tell us to go before we get in the car, mom_. She points out that there will be vending machines full of snacks at the rest stop, and that gets Miller and Monty on board, at least. As though Monty didn't eat a _pound of maple candy_ with lunch.

But Clarke prioritizes her worries, and Monty's stomach is not the reason she's been throwing worried looks at the rear view mirror every ten seconds.

Raven's out the door of the van like a shot, while Clarke's still engaging the parking brake and rolling the windows up.

Clarke doesn't chase after her. She'll have time.

Bellamy makes eye contact with her. She makes a face, and he nods.

"Hey, O. Come get a picture of me by the road sign."

"Take a selfie," Octavia says, disgusted.

"Photography is an art, O. I need an artist," and Clarke swings out of the driver seat, confident O won't be following until she's had at least a solid minute of mocking her brother for being _the oldest person in the world, Bell, God_.

Raven's washing her hands when Clarke steps into the bleak concrete public restroom. Clarke catches her eye in the mirror.

Raven looks away.

"Can I talk to you?" Clarke asks.

"Either you can talk or I'm having an obnoxious auditory hallucination."

"About Murphy."

"Right." Raven shoves her hands under the dryer. It lacks something, as a dramatic gesture, though they do have to raise their voices over the sound it makes. "Your new best friend Murphy."

Calmly, Clarke says, "He isn't my best friend."

"Really. Because you're in a big rush to throw me over for him."

"I'm not going to throw you over for anyone," Clarke says. She's completely cool; Raven would never guess that her stomach is doing insane leaps and dives right now. "If it came down to giving him a ride or giving you a ride, I'd pick you. But that's not the situation we're in, so -- if I can help a person, I will."

"Thank for explaining basic morality to me, Professor Griffin." Raven gives up on the dryer, wipes her hands on her pants. "But your equation is missing something. Murphy's not a person. He's an asswipe."

"Asswipes are people, too." Clarke risks a smile.

Raven does not return it. "If he looks at me funny, I'm going to murder him."

"And I'll help you bury the body," Clarke says. "And if I can tell he's thinking about looking at you funny, I'll tell him to leave. Murder's a lot of work."

It's not really a grand declaration of friendship. Clarke's always been more persuasive about big picture arguments, plans of attack. Mock trial closing statements. _You're my friend and I want to take care of you_ never comes out the way she wants it to.

Still, she thought it was decent.

But Raven just mutters, "yeah, we'll see," and heads out of the bathroom.

Clarke watches her departure in the mirror.

She takes a second to wash her hands and splash some water on her face before she follows Raven out.

-

Clarke is driving when they get the first good, unobstructed view of the ocean.

Granted, she sees Puget Sound on a daily basis, so it's not like _the ocean_ is some mythical wonder. But it's still cool to look at, and it's nice as a marker: _look how far we've come._

_We're not home anymore._

She feels rather than sees Octavia sit up, banging on the back of the driver's seat. "Pull over!"

"What?" Clarke asks, but she's already throwing on her turn signal. The freeway is narrow here, but they pass a sign for a scenic viewpoint in a mile. "Are you okay? Bellamy, pass her one of the barf bags."

"Told you they were barf bags," Monty says from the back.

"Geez, Little Blake, you're flipping out," Raven says.

"What is she on and who's holding?" Murphy asks.

At least two voices say "shut up, Murphy." Clarke tunes them out, can only hear Octavia repeat, low but urgent, " _pull over_."

They reach the viewpoint and Clarke throws the van in park.

Octavia's got the door open before the vehicle comes to a full stop. Bellamy swears and exits the van after her.

Whatever's gotten into Octavia, she's not ill. She runs flat out for the guardrail and nearly goes over it, leaning her whole body forward like she wants to launch herself into the ocean.

"What the hell, O?"

"I want to see the ocean," Octavia says, as though this were a reasonable reason for scaring the shit out of everyone.

Bellamy makes a face that Clarke thinks of as his _I am going to be a good person if it kills me_ face. "We're going to a real beach in two days."

"I want to go to this one," Octavia says, and swings one leg over the guardrail.

Clarke might feel comfortable with Octavia climbing down if she were a mountain goat. As is, she's wondering if she and Bellamy between them could pick Octavia up and drag her back to the van.

They probably could, but it would be grabbing the tiger by the tail. Eventually she'd get out again and there'd be hell to pay.

"Hey," Miller calls, twenty feet down the guardrail. "There's a path here."

Octavia darts over. Bellamy follows her. Clarke follows Bellamy.

There is a trail down to the beach, though it looks like it was created by animal or natural forces, rather than human. It's almost certainly illegal or at least frowned upon for tourists to climb down; the guardrail is in their way. But it looks like the sort of thing a human could walk, if she had to.

"Sweet." Octavia steps over the guardrail again. "Race you, Miller." She's over the side like a shot, half-running, half-falling.

"I'm giving you a head start 'cause otherwise it wouldn't be fair!" Miller yells, and starts after her.

"I think Octavia's decided what she wants to do on this road trip," Monty says.

"Drive me to a heart attack?" Bellamy grumps. "That's fine, I always wanted to die by the ocean. Give me a Viking funeral."

"I was thinking we'd steal your clothes and toss you into the ocean naked," Raven says.

"Gotta leave his shoes on, though," Monty adds. "Then when his feet rot off his corpse they'll wash up on shore and people will think he was murdered by a serial killer."

Murphy flings an arm over Monty's shoulder. "That was deeply disturbing, Green. Maybe you're not so bad after all."

Monty, to his credit, does not shove Murphy off him. Clarke couldn't say she'd handle it as well if Murphy was hanging off her arm.

Bellamy's still peering over the guardrail, though Octavia and Miller have reached the shore safely.

"They've had their fun," Clarke says. "We should go collect them."

"God forbid anyone use more than their ration of fun," Murphy says.

"I'll go," Bellamy says, short.

"What, you think I'm afraid heights?" Clarke doesn't want to take the steep and narrow path down to the shore, and she really doesn't want to climb back up it after. But she doesn't think letting Bellamy go after Octavia on his own when she's in full wild-child mode is a great idea.

Bellamy shrugs. "Fine. After you."

Clarke steps up to the guardrail and turns to look back at the rest of the group. "You guys coming?"

"Yeah, that's not happening." Raven taps her bad leg.

Murphy sniffs. "I don't do mountain climbing. Or _togetherness_."

"I'll stay here to make sure no one dies," Monty says.

Clarke isn't religious, but she breathes a little prayer of thanks for Monty. Leaving Murphy and Raven alone together would be at least as bad as sending Bellamy after Octavia by himself. It's like one of those riddles, _the farmer has to get the fox, the goat, and the cabbage across the river_ , and Monty is her cheat code. 

"Keys are in the ignition," she says. "If you have to move the van for some reason, text us."

Monty gives her a thumbs up, and she sets off down the bluff, Bellamy right behind her.

She nearly falls four times. The first time she catches herself by grabbing a bit of twisted shrubbery. The second and third time, Bellamy catches her. The fourth time she slides twenty feet on her ass.

It's a good thing that she didn't send Bellamy down alone. This way, _she_ can be the one to murder Octavia, and it will be _so_ much more satisfying.

"Weren't you a Girl Scout?" Bellamy says. "They're going to demand their badges back."

"When we get stranded in the wilderness and I can build a shelter and start a fire while you're freezing to death, I'm going to remind you that you said that," Clarke pats her hands along the seat of her jeans, but they aren't torn as far as she can tell. "And then I'm going to let you freeze to death."

"It's not the freezing to death that hurts, it's the 'I told you so'."

"Exactly."

They reach the shore, which is nothing more than a narrow strip of sand and rock that would be completely underwater during a high tide. It stinks of rot and seaweed. Clarke cannot for the life of her understand the appeal.

Miller tosses a piece of driftwood into the water and watches it splash.

Octavia stares out across the ocean like she can see all the way to Asia if she looks hard enough.

As they get closer, Octavia opens her mouth and _screams._

It doesn't sound like a noise a sixteen year old girl could make. It's primordial; the pain of a wounded animal who cannot conceive of healing, who does not understand that the pain will recede, who does not know anyone is coming to help.

It pricks something in the deepest parts of Clarke's brain.

There is something wrong, and she doesn't know what.

She looks at Bellamy, but he jerks his chin away. _Not now._

"Yeah, fuck you, ocean!" Miller yells. Clarke shoots him a look, ready to rip him one for the sheer inappropriateness of his glee, but he's scowling. "You suck! The Atlantic is way better than you!"

He knows something's going on, she realizes with a start. But he's opted for playing dumb rather than confronting Octavia.

Clarke can't say he's wrong. She wonders if he knows something she doesn't, or if he's winging it. Either way, she thinks he's got the right idea.

"What, do you both have the _whale ate my parents_ trait?" Clarke thinks she sounds pretty good, wry and humorous, rather than _deeply pissed off_. Maybe she should have been in Twelfth Night. She could have crammed thirty-eight extracurriculars into her high school career rather than a measly thirty-seven.

"Since when do you play the Sims, Griffin?" Miller asks.

"I see memes," Clarke says.

Miller snorts. "I bet you do. You set a timer every day for twenty minutes of internet culture appreciation."

"Yup. It's right before my daily twenty minutes of writing 'your mom' jokes. Want to hear some?"

"That's cold, Griffin. I'm a child of divorce. You gotta play nice with me."

"We should go back up to the car." Clarke turns enough to include Octavia in this statement in a general rather than targeted way. "Raven could at this very moment be killing Murphy, you wouldn't want to miss that."

"Damn straight. Race you, Blake."

It's not exactly a race when Miller is half-dragging Bellamy back up the path, too far ahead of Octavia for him to get a word in to her, but if Bellamy and Miller don't mind then Clarke doesn't see why she should either.

Octavia turns to face her. There's ocean spray on her face, and her hair is blown wild, strands sticking to her skin here and there. She looks like a poster girl for a movie about elves, or warrior maidens, or survivors of the apocalypse.

"Gonna lecture me, Clarke?"

Clarke thinks about her words very carefully. "I know exactly how well I respond to people telling me what to do. And I know that you prize your independence as much as I do. So no, I'm not." She chews over her thoughts. Neither of them is going to believe that that's all she has to say about Octavia scaring the daylights out of her and running down a cliff face. "Next time you want something from me, I'd rather you asked."

Octavia shrugs. "I bet that works for you. Asking. It never got me a damn thing."

Clarke knows, for a fact, that that's a lie.

But if Octavia believes it's true, there's not a lot that Clarke can say to prove her wrong.

She settles for, "So we'll start on a new page. From now on, if you ask for something and it's not totally crazy, we'll make it happen."

"Hasn't anyone told you?" Octavia asks. "Everything about me is totally crazy."

Clarke looks out at the ocean. She could follow Octavia's example and scream. She could ask, _when did you stop trusting me enough to tell me what's going on_. She could say _I don't care what the hell's gotten into you_ and try to make herself mean it.

But Clarke is a problem solver, a list maker, and right now the most important thing is getting Octavia back up the hill without any more drama.

"That's the best I can offer," Clarke says. "You can keep running away and dragging everyone else with you, but I think you'll find that doesn't pan out very well as a long term strategy."

Octavia looks at her for a long time before smiling, sharp and brittle. "God, you're so reasonable, Clarke. Who could ever argue with _you_?"

She starts back up the cliff.

Clarke tries to take this as a win.

-

To her surprise, it _is_ a win: troop morale, as Bellamy would put it, reaches a new peak when the four of them emerge from the cliff path, sweaty, sandy, and exhausted.

It starts when Murphy says, "God, who knew Little Blake was such a badass?" and holds his fist out for a bump.

Octavia gives it to him, and Clarke feels a tug inside her, the half of her that's worried about Octavia's well-being at odds with the half of her that's glad to have an additional buffer between Murphy and Raven.

Miller shows Raven and Monty a seashell he found, which boosts all of their spirits -- Raven, because she gets to mock Miller for geeking out over seashells; Monty, because Miller slides the seashell into his shirt pocket and tells him to keep it; Miller, because he's pumped about either Monty's goofy grin or Raven's relentless mockery. It's a little hard to tell what goes on in Miller's head, sometimes.

Raven takes the next turn behind the wheel, even though it's not time for them to switch drivers.

"Or are you going to break into hives if we ruin your perfect schedule?" Raven asks Clarke.

"By all means. If you want to pull your own weight, I won't complain."

"Aw, lookit," Raven coos. "She's pretending she doesn't get off on doing all of the work."

Clarke rolls her eyes and takes Raven's old seat in the second row. Bellamy stays up front, the map open on his lap, though their plan at this point is 'stay on the Pacific Coast Highway for a thousand miles.' The risk of getting lost is pretty minimal.

Octavia asks Monty about his DS and ends up in the backseat.

Murphy moves to the seat next to Clarke.

"Unless I'm bothering you, Princess."

"If you were, I'd just take a nap," Clarke says. "What are you doing here?"

"Well, Little Blake is trying to cockblock Miller, so I got shoved forward a row." There's a loud _thump_ that suggests Miller kicked the back of Murphy's chair.

"Yeah, that's what I'm worried about, is seating arrangements," Clarke says. "How'd you end up on the side of I-5 sticking your thumb out?"

"They let anyone on buses, you know. Or maybe you don't, I guess you've never been on public transit in your life."

Clarke can practically hear Bellamy's scowl, and she's a little touched. He'll give her crap about her family's money, but he's not going to let everyone else pass judgment on her for it.

That's a lot, for her, to know that Bellamy is in her corner against all challengers.

She presses one foot against the back of the seat in front of her, subtle enough Murphy shouldn't notice, but hoping that Bellamy feels the gesture all the same, knows that his objection has been heard and appreciated.

"I was more interested in the motivation than the logistics."

Murphy turns his head away from her, looking out the window.

"I turned eighteen a week ago," he says.

Someone in the backseat chokes on a laugh. Clarke hopes like hell that it is a response to the video game, and not to Murphy's confession.

"Didn't know that, Griffin, did you?" Murphy asks. "Don't worry, you're not the only one who forgot. My mom spent the entire day passed out on the living room floor. I spent the entire day pawning everything of hers with any resale value."

There was no reason for Clarke to have known that it was Murphy's birthday. They aren't friends. They haven't even had a class together since sophomore year gym. It's not her fault that his mom is -- a drunk, or an addict, or whatever she is.

But there is something she can give him.

"You weren't at graduation," Clarke says.

His shoulders twitch, like he's surprised that she'd noticed, but his voice is deliberately casual. "Yeah, well, I looked at the school rules and it turned out that I could miss the last three days of school and still get my diploma, so I did. You know you don't need to go to graduation to get your diploma. They mail it to you if you've met all your credits."

"Since I attended graduation," Clarke says, "yeah, I did know that. They gave us a placeholder when we crossed the stage."

"You'll forgive me if I didn't think a placeholder was worth putting up with three hours of fake camaraderie," Murphy says. "I was a little busy wrapping up business around town."

"And now you're running away."

"You can't be a runaway if you're over the age of majority," Murphy tells her. "I looked that up, too."

"Does your mom know?" Clarke asks. "That you left?"

"I promise you, she doesn't care."

Clarke looks out the window. Wonders if the high school would tell her John Murphy's home address, if she asked. It's definitely against school policy. But the counselors like her.

"We're going to San Diego," she tells him. "If you decide you want to get off in Oregon, or San Francisco, we'll wish you the best. But we could take you that far."

Murphy is quiet for so long that Clarke thinks maybe _he's_ taking a nap to get out of talking to _her_.

But then he says, "Don't worry, Griffin. I know invitations come with an expiration date."

-

"Oh, look," Monty says. His fake cheery voice sounds a lot like his real cheery voice, but Clarke is pretty sure he's being sarcastic. "A tree!"

"Cool," Miller says. "That brings us up to, what, eight million and four trees?"

It's possible that cabin fever is setting in. The last real moment of joy and excitement was a couple hours before, when they'd passed a sign welcoming them to Oregon. "It thinks it's a real state, that's cute," Miller had said. Since then it's been -- well, a lot of trees.

"I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with _t_ ," Raven says.

"Let me guess," Octavia drones. "Tree?"

"Definitely wasn't turn signal," Bellamy says, as the driver in the next lane cuts them off.

Raven blasts the car horn for a solid five seconds and says, "The correct answer is _tedium_. I'm bored to death of trees and scenic vistas and shit."

"Sorry for the great natural beauty we're driving through," Clarke says. "We can drive back on I-5 and it'll just be dirt and cows the entire way."

"I don't want to see a cow unless it's medium rare on a bun." Raven aggressively changes lanes and slams her foot on the gas to pass the car that cut them off.

Clarke holds her breath until they're safely around the car, accident-free. "Okay, what do you want?"

"I want you all to not be so boring. Don't pretend like you didn't plan a bunch of 'fun road trip games.'"

Clarke downloaded six different road trip game apps on her phone the night before, but she thinks that for all the shit Raven's given her today, she'll have to wait a few more minutes before Clarke shares that fact.

"I've got one." Octavia leans forward and slams her fist into Murphy's shoulder.

"What the _fuck_ , Little Blake!"

Octavia shrugs. "Punch buggy blue."

Clarke looks through the windshield, and sure enough, she spots a blue VW Beetle ahead of them.

She also witnesses Bellamy's epic glare. It's directed equal parts at Murphy and Octavia. Clarke wonders if maybe his _don't be an asshole to Raven_ conversation included an aside about the proper treatment of little sisters.

"You don't want to start this with me," Murphy says ominously.

Octavia looks unconcerned. "Sure I do."

"You think I'm afraid to hit back?"

"Murphy," Bellamy growls.

"Are you?" Octavia challenges him.

"Oh, hey," Miller says, and punches Murphy in exactly the same spot as Octavia. "Punch buggy green."

It takes the rest of them a second to figure out, and then:

"The _fuck_ , Miller, that's a Subaru."

"Really?" Miller puts on a look of shock so exaggerated it can only be fake. "I could have sworn it was a Beetle."

Murphy twists around in his seat to get at Miller, but Miller is not too proud to hide behind Monty, who pulls his wide eyed _you wouldn't hurt little old me, would you?_ act.

"Look," Raven says, "Punch buggy 18-wheeler," and she turns around far enough to hit Murphy's leg. It's more of a smack than a punch, which does absolutely nothing to alleviate Clarke's anxiety about the fact that Raven has one hand on the wheel and zero eyes on the road.

" _Just drive_ ," Clarke says, at the same time Bellamy says, "Eyes front, Reyes."

"I know how to drive a car," Raven says pointedly, "unlike _some_ people."

"Great," Bellamy tells her, "then do that and don't kill us all."

"Save some murder for the rest of us," Murphy says.

"No murder," Clarke states loudly. "I cannot _believe_ that I had to make that a rule."

"I don't know," Monty says thoughtfully. "'Don't commit murder' is a pretty standard rule to have."

"Then I shouldn't have to state it. It should be assumed."

"You know what happens when you assume things," Miller chides.

"Someone ends up murdered in a ditch?" Octavia asks.

"Are we taking votes on who that is?" Raven asks. "Because I've got a suggestion."

"NO MURDER," Clarke says again. "And no more punch buggy. You guys are doing it wrong."

"Yeah, you guys ruined violence," Bellamy adds. "Congratulation. Stop punching each other and find a constructive way to manage your boredom." He rubs a hand across his face. "Jesus, what am I, your dad?"

"Don't worry," Octavia mutters. "None of us thought you were our dad."

"Hey, Dad," Miller says, sitting forward again suddenly. Murphy takes a half-hearted swipe at him, but Miller blocks it. "Can we pull over? I want to go to there." He points at a billboard advertising something called THE SASQUATCH SHACK.

Clarke wrinkles her nose. "Seriously?"

Miller is undeterred by her disgust. "You said we could decide what we want to do on this road trip. I want to buy overpriced souvenirs from shitty tourist traps."

Clarke looks at the advertisement that promises them they're FIVE MILES FROM WONDER. It looks less like an official billboard and more like something someone put up by themselves in the middle of the night, illegally.

"Yeah, I don't think the people who run that place know about Clarke's revolutionary no-murder policy." Bellamy sounds no more on board with this plan than Clarke is. "There's a one hundred percent chance that they try to kill us."

"What, and fighting off hicks isn't your idea of a fun time?" Miller asks.

"Too bad it's not up to him," Raven says. "I'm driving, I say we pull over."

"You're joking," Clarke says.

"Nope." Raven makes the word pop. "I want to fight a murder hillbilly. Or watch Miller geek out about Bigfoot, either way."

"Yeah, okay," Bellamy grumbles, "when you put it like that," and in five miles they're pulling over at an underwhelming shack in the middle of nowhere, Oregon.

Miller _does_ geek out about Bigfoot, which is worth the price of admission. Metaphorically speaking. Nothing justifies a fifteen dollar charge to walk around a rundown cabin looking at a lot of shoddily constructed "unexplained phenomena". But the people running the place don't try to murder them and don't even try to steal anything, unless you count overcharging them to look at a bunch of fake crap, which Clarke does.

At least they're all getting to stretch their legs and look at something besides trees. And Miller takes a thousand selfies with the thirteen-foot Bigfoot statue, which is weirdly endearing.

"Having second thoughts yet?" Bellamy asks Clarke. They're standing in front of a jackalope, and Clarke can _see_ the strings tying the horns onto the rabbit's head.

"I didn't want to stop here in the first place," Clarke says. "I'm on the record as being firmly anti-taxidermy."

"Way to take a controversial position," Bellamy says. "That's like saying you're anti-bigotry and pro-chocolate."

"Sometimes the majority of people think a thing because it's objectively true. Taxidermy being creepy is one of those times."

"I'll keep that in mind if I ever need a hobby that makes everyone hate me."

"The problem isn't all the people who would hate you. It's the taxidermy groupies you have to look out for."

"Thanks, that's not terrifying." Bellamy looks at her out of the corner of his eye. "I meant the road trip."

"The road trip is also terrifying."

"Clarke."

"I know." She bites her lip. "I'm still glad I'm here. Even if everyone is conspiring against us."

"You and me against the world?"

"I'd rather that than just me against the world."

Bellamy nods, like this was what he was after the whole time. "Okay. So we keep going."

"I don't think we have much of a choice," Clarke says. "The troops would mutiny if we tried to drive back home. And then my mother would loudly _not_ tell me that she was right all along. I'd rather drive through hell with you six than put up with that."

Bellamy snorts. "If I have to drive through hell, I'd pick you six."

"What, even Murphy?"

"We need someone we can throw to the devils as a distraction."

"The needs of the group outweigh the needs of the individual?" Clarke asks. "That's surprisingly pragmatic of you, Blake."

"Like you're going to tell me I'm wrong."

"I'm not, but I expect to argue with you about these things. You're letting down Team Idealist."

"Team Idealist is too easily let down."

Clarke shakes her head at him. "I'll take the next turn driving. I might ask Murphy to sit up front with me, keep him out of range of everyone else."

Bellamy looks like he's about to say something, but stops himself.

Clarke crosses her arms and waits.

"I can drive," he says. "I don't mind."

"You drove for like six hours this morning," Clarke says. "That's way more than I did."

Bellamy sighs, long and reluctant. "I'd rather drive than sit in the back."

"The mockery isn't that bad," Clarke says. "If I can handle it you should too. It'll toughen you up."

"It's not that, it's -- fuck. I get carsick."

"No you don't," she blurts out.

Bellamy raises an eyebrow at her. At least he looks amused. "Sorry, are you arguing with me about how my own body works?"

"Yes -- no -- I've never seen you get carsick!" Clarke has ridden in cars with Bellamy a hundred times. Never for as long as a road trip, sure. But if he got carsick she'd know, wouldn't she?

"I never sit in the backseat," Bellamy says, and that's true. He either drives or rides shotgun. Clarke had chalked that up to a mix of Bellamy being the responsible one who plays navigator and Bellamy being the high status one who gets dibs on the best seat in the house. She hadn't realized there was a _dark conspiracy_ at work. "So unless you want someone to use those barf bags you neurotically packed -- "

"This is amazing." Clarke smiles at him. "You're not perfect."

"I never said I was," Bellamy protests.

"No, this is great. Okay, you get shotgun for the rest of the trip. It can be rule of the jungle in the back of the van."

"Unless you want _Murphy_ to drive," Bellamy says, and Clarke shudders.

"This is my dead dad's van we're talking about. I'd like it to not be crushed to smithereens by the end of the week."

"Better not give Raven another turn at the wheel, then," Bellamy says.

Clarke sighs.

"Or we can have another one of those 'this is how things are going to be' conversations," Bellamy continues. "But you get to lecture Raven about road safety. I took the Murphy conversation."

"You volunteered for the Murphy conversation!"

"You could have fought me harder for it," but Bellamy is smiling.

"You're such an asshole. I want a divorce."

"Too late, I called it. You don't get to divorce me, I'm going to divorce you."

"I think that makes the divorce uncontested."

"No, screw that. I want one of those really ugly divorces. Fighting tooth and nail over every ten dollar tchotchke that we own."

"Oh, God, speaking of ten dollar tchotchkes," Clarke groans, and jerks her head over at the gift shop.

"I thought Miller was joking about the souvenirs."

Clarke asks, "You thought that there was an intersection of sentimentality and camp that Miller wouldn't be interested in?"

"It sounds stupid when you say it like that."

Miller comes bounding up to them. He's wearing a t-shirt that has a silhouette of a Sasquatch and the words _you know what they say about those guys with Bigfoot_. It is stupendously ugly. Miller is never allowed to mock Clarke about her van again.

"This was fun." Miller throws an arm around Bellamy's shoulders. "Thanks for bringing us, Dad."

"You need to stop calling me dad," Bellamy grumbles, but doesn't try to escape the hug.

"Don't make it weird, Miller," Clarke says. She can tell he's expecting a real rebuke, which makes it that much better when she adds, "You know your father likes to pretend he's young and hip."

"Now I'm not going to divorce you, out of spite," Bellamy tells Clarke, as Miller throws his other arm around Clarke's shoulders. "You're going to be stuck with me for the rest of your life, did you think about that?"

"The horror," Clarke intones, and gives Miller a squeeze before pulling away. "I'm going to round up the rest of the children. I refuse to be one of those mothers who leaves her kids behind at a rest stop."

"Yeah, ruin your kids in other ways," Miller says. "Like putting way too much pressure on them until they have a nervous breakdown."

"I can't believe you'd call out my mom like that," Clarke replies dryly. "I came out to have a Bigfoot time and I feel so attacked right now."

"You need to spend more time on your memes," Miller says. "Come on, Blake, I'm going to buy you a keychain."

"No, you won't," Bellamy argues, but Miller's got him firmly in hand and drags him to the gift shop.

-

They stop for dinner before checking in to the hotel, dicking around the diner ordering three times as many milkshakes as any human being needs to ingest, so it's late by the time they're checked in.

The woman working the front desk apologizes, "I'm so sorry, the pool just closed."

"That's not a problem," Clarke smiles her politest customer service smile. "We've had a long day, we should turn in now."

They grab their bags out of the car and crowd into the elevator.

The doors clunk shut behind them and Raven says, "So, we're breaking into this pool."

"Hell yeah," Miller chimes in.

"You guys are going to get us kicked out of the hotel," Bellamy grumbles. "We're going to have to sleep in the van."

"I'm in," Octavia says, as though there was any doubt that she'd be up for breaking the rules and defying her brother.

"Pass," Murphy says. "I don't have a swimsuit."

"Motion to bar skinny-dipping on this vacation," Monty says.

Clarke and Raven say "seconded" at the same time.

Miller asks, "For everyone or just Murphy?"

Bellamy scowls deeper than before. He's going to have so many wrinkles by the time he's thirty.

"For everyone," Raven says, "I'm not playing voyeur for any of you perverts." The doors open, and Raven steps off the elevator. "Get changed and meet in the hallway in two minutes." She looks around the hall and orients herself. "First room's this way."

Miller checks the second room key. "Our room's over here."

They split into two groups along gender lines without discussion. Clarke's a little disappointed in all of them, frankly, but it's not like she's going to offer to share with Murphy if everyone's giving her an excuse not to. And Octavia could use some space away from Bellamy.

Clarke changes into her swimsuit and throws her clothes back on over it. They're going to have to walk through the hotel to find the pool, and she'd rather be inconspicuous. Raven has the same idea, but Octavia just shimmies back into jeans and leaves her bikini top bare.

Some quick mental arithmetic tells Clarke that this is not worth fighting Octavia over, so they go out to meet the guys by the elevator.

Bellamy is covered back up like normal -- he might not have changed at all. He might want to play lookout while the rest of them break hotel rules. Monty and Miller are in t-shirts and swim trunks, but from a distance they look dressed, if casual.

Murphy, to her surprise, is still with them, wearing a pair of ratty shorts instead of a pair of ratty jeans.

"Thought you weren't swimming," Clarke says, neutral.

"Blake misses me when I'm not around," Murphy drawls. "He can't bear to let me out of his sight."

"All of my delinquents in one place," Bellamy says. "I'd rather we only break one rule at a time, thanks."

"I don't know, divide and conquer is a thing," Clarke tells him. "If security can only respond to one complaint, the other group gets away."

"Yeah, I'm not counting on that _if_. Does anyone even know where the pool is?"

"Outside," Raven says. From the look on her face, she knows that she isn't being helpful, and she enjoys that fact.

They end up walking back through the lobby, which is nearly deserted. The woman at the front desk who had checked them in is talking with someone in the room behind her, but they all look at each other for confirmation: _we can't get caught._

Octavia looks both ways, confirms no one is watching, and then somersaults past the desk, below eye level.

Monty gives her a silent cheer. Raven shakes her head, but smiles. Miller air-claps.

Octavia stands up, brushes herself off, and takes a bow. Then she looks down the hallway behind her and points excitedly.

"I'm going in," Monty whispers, and crab-walks after Octavia. Miller follows, crouched low and stopping every few seconds, striking dramatic poses like he's in _Mission: Impossible_.

"How are these our friends?" Clarke asks Bellamy.

"I'm stuck with Octavia. I don't know what your excuse is."

"This is getting stupid," Raven says, "I'm not doing the limbo." She walks past the desk in her normal gait. The hotel employee doesn't look over.

Clarke hurries after, Bellamy and Murphy in tow, and rejoins the group in time to witness Raven smacking Miller. "Could you be any more of a nerd?"

"If you can't deal with nerds, I've got some bad news for you, MIT," Miller says.

"Shut up, nerds," Octavia hisses. "The _pool_ is calling."

Clarke fails to see how that sentence is any less nerdy than anything that preceded it, except for the fact that it was spoken by a sixteen-year-old in a bikini. But it's the twenty-first century, and Clarke is a feminist; attractive women can be anything, including nerds.

They make their way outside to the pool area without trouble. The gate around the pool is locked, but Murphy boosts Miller over, and Miller unlocks it from the inside and lets the rest of them in.

Octavia is the first out of her street clothes, stripping her pants off and jumping into the pool with a loud war cry and a cannonball _splash_.

"God, Little Blake, do you know what the word _sneaky_ means?" Miller asks when Octavia resurfaces.

"No."

"We're all going to get banned from Best Western," Bellamy says. "I'm going to die from the embarrassment of not being good enough for _Best Western_."

"Might as well have some fun before you die," Raven says, and pushes him into the pool.

Clarke takes two steps forward to catch him before she realizes that there's no way in hell she can get there in time. He's going in the water, fully clothed and hopefully not with his cell phone in his pocket.

Bellamy doesn't look pissed when he surfaces, though. "You got me, Reyes." He swims up to the side of the pool and holds a hand out. "Give me a hand getting out of here, would you?"

"Yeah, I'm not falling for that."

Bellamy grumbles and pulls himself out of the pool. He strips off his wet clothes, and Clarke watches long enough to confirm that he does have a swimsuit on underneath.

"Can someone find me some towels?"

There's a locked cabinet behind the hot tub. Murphy nonchalantly grabs a rock out of the nearest planter and smashes the lock open.

More mental arithmetic; another negative number. Clarke is a creature of priorities, and the main priority is peace and prosperity among the group. Ten dollars of damage to a major corporation's property is so far outside the range of things worth commenting on that she can't even see it.

Bellamy gets his clothes rolled up in towels and tries to press the water out of them while the rest of the group, minus Murphy, strips down to their swimsuits.

Monty sticks one toe in the pool, hovering over the edge precariously. He makes the perfect target to push into the water, but either they got that impulse out of their collective system or it's just not fun to prank Monty, because no one does it.

"Too cold," Monty declares.

"No shit," Bellamy says. His curls are dripping.

Monty adds, "we should turn the hot tub on," and Clarke has to admit that sounds like fun.

Monty gets the tub working while the rest of them slide into the water. Raven has to remove her leg brace, first, and climb in holding the rails. Clarke wants to offer her a hand, but she has a feeling that would result in a face full of chlorinated water. So she watches carefully, relieved when Raven's face relaxes.

"This is _nice_ ," Raven says, and shoots a dark look at Murphy, who's sitting on the edge, only his feet in the water. "I feel bad for anyone who doesn't get to come in."

"I don't want to go in there," Murphy says. "I bet Miller pees in it."

"Monty, push him in the pool for me," Miller says, and Monty comes to join them.

"Are you kidding? We're ten feet from the pool. 'Dragging human bodies ten feet over concrete' is not in my skill set."

"You can do anything you put your mind to," Octavia says. "The body is only a tool."

As though proving a point, she takes an enormous breath and ducks under the water.

"Now I really hope Miller doesn't pee," Murphy says.

"Would you stop being gross?" Bellamy asks. Clarke can recognize the tone of voice as a mild warning: there's not hell to pay yet, but there will be if they continue undeterred on the same path. Hopefully Murphy recognizes the tone of voice; she prepares herself to interrupt or change the topic, if he doesn't.

"I hate to point this out," Monty says. "But it's statistically guaranteed that someone peed in this hot tub at some point."

"But someone we don't know, so it's fine," Raven says. "Get in the damn jacuzzi already."

"There's no room," Monty says, and Clarke budges a little closer to Bellamy, opening up a nearly-Monty-sized space between her and Miller.

"Isn't that worse?" Miller asks. "If we're swimming in a stranger's pee."

"You'd rather be swimming in the pee of someone you know?" Raven asks.

"You're all disgusting, I don't know why I talk to any of you," Bellamy says. It's not a warning this time, just grumpy old man judgment. Clarke relaxes a little against his side.

"It's cause you love us," Miller coos, making a kissy face at Bellamy.

"Bellamy loooooves us," Raven sing-songs, "groooooooss."

"Bellamy and all of us, sitting in a tree," Miller sings. "M-o-m-m-i-n-g."

"'Mom' isn't a verb, moron," Bellamy says.

"Correcting our grammar: total mom move," Raven says.

Octavia pops back up from the bottom of the hot tub, gasping. "See? How long was that?"

"You can't assume people are going to time you, Little Blake," Miller says.

Octavia scowls and throws her dripping wet hair back over her shoulder. It splashes some water Miller's way, which was probably the point. It also splashes Raven and Murphy, which may or may not have been the point. "You're all useless," she says, and perches on the bench between Miller and Raven.

"Not useless," Raven says. "While you were down there, Monty proved there's urine in the water."

"Hypothesized! Not proved," Monty says. "I expect you to have more respect for the scientific method, Raven."

"I was simplifying for the civilians."

Clarke shuts her eyes. It's nice, being surrounded by her friends and feeling the aches of the day fade out of her body.

She lets herself tune out the conversation until the bickering is nothing but a pleasant background buzz, and loses track of time.

At some point the jets turn off, and there's some discussion about getting out of the hot tub, and then she hears Miller say, "Party foul on Griffin. Who's got a Sharpie?"

"Yeah, let me grab that Sharpie that I keep in the pocket of my bikini, genius." Clarke can almost hear Raven rolling her eyes.

"Leave her alone," Bellamy says. There's the mild warning in his voice again, and Clarke doesn't think it's called for. She should let him know that she can take care of herself, but -- it's kind of nice, that he's trying to take care of her anyway. "She's the whole reason we have a road trip, she gets to fall asleep in the jacuzzi if she wants to."

"I'm just going to mess with her a little," Miller says, and there's a small wave that lets Clarke know that someone's moving in the tub.

She grabs Miller's arm before he realizes she's awake, and while he has the strength advantage on her, that gives her some leverage. "Hey, Miller," Clarke says. "Want to find out how long you can hold your breath?"

"You guys will time Miller but not me?" Octavia asks, disgusted.

Miller lifts his free arm over his head. "I admit defeat. Please let me go."

"Recant your vile slander about me committing a party foul," Clarke insists. "I could out-party all of you with both hands behind my back."

"I feel like I know way too much about Clarke's kinks, now," Raven smirks, and Octavia gags.

"I recant my vile slander and pledge myself to defending the lack-of-honor of Party Goddess, Clarke Griffin," Miller says.

"Good," Clarke says, and releases him. "Never doubt me again."

"I've learned my lesson."

"You all stick around if you want," Bellamy says, standing up. "I'm getting out of here before this turns into the beginning of _Sunset Boulevard_."

"Could you possibly be more of an old man?" Raven asks, while Monty and Miller pull themselves out of the hot tub.

"No," Bellamy says. "This is peak old man."

"It isn't, though," Clarke points out. "This is the youngest you'll ever be from now on. You're just going to get older and older."

"That's a cheery thought," Monty says.

"Maybe Bellamy's going to mellow out as he gets older," Miller says. "Be one of those old guys that goes to young people's parties to 'hang'."

"If it ever comes to that, you have my permission to put me out of my misery," Bellamy says.

"Nah, wouldn't want to deprive the world of Bellamy Blake," Miller says. "I'd record that shit and post it on whatever we all use instead of Youtube in sixty years."

"Then _I'll_ put _you_ out of your misery," Bellamy says.

"Octogenarian slap fight." Raven nods. "That would get viewers."

None of them want to struggle back into cold jeans while they're still damp from the tub, so they tromp back through the hotel lobby in swimsuits and stolen towels, dripping all over the floor.

There isn't anyone at the front desk. It's incredibly anti-climactic.

"I'm not saying I wanted to get kicked out of Best Western," Clarke whispers to Bellamy. "But I feel like it should have been harder to get away with this."

"Are you trying to jinx us?" Bellamy hisses back at her.

"Since when are you superstitious?"

"It's a miracle I've survived you guys this long. I'm not ruling out supernatural explanations for anything."

They ride up the elevator to their floor in silence, and Clarke wonders if everyone is a little tired of each other. Or just tired in general. They made it to California in one day; they can afford to sleep in tomorrow, and she thinks they'll all be better off for it.

The group splits up for the night without much fanfare; Clarke and Bellamy coordinate setting their alarms, and Raven punches Bellamy's shoulder in lieu of saying _good night_.

When Clarke unlocks the door to their room, Octavia immediately crawls on top of the closer bed and starfishes out on it. She's a tiny girl. She shouldn't be able to take up that much space.

Raven looks at Clarke. "Guess I'm going to find out if you're a cuddler, Griffin."

"In your dreams," Clarke retorts, but she _is_ a cuddler, always has been. She regrets it the next morning when she wakes up with Raven's bony elbows in her gut and Raven's bony ankles digging into her calves. Raven is all bones, all sharp edges. There is no way of approaching her with your guard down, if you aren't ready to pay for it with blood and bruises.

"Tonight I'm sleeping with Octavia," Clarke grumbles.

She doesn't know that Raven's awake until she answers, "yeah, if you think she doesn't sleep-strangle people, you're delusional."

Clarke cranes her head up and over, but there's no way in hell Octavia is awake. She might not be _alive_. Clarke should worry about that, but she's still sluggish, and Raven rolls over in bed, which leaves Clarke with all of the pleasant shared body warmth and none of the deadly joints poking into her internal organs. She figures worrying after the life and safety of everyone else can wait until her alarm has gone off.

That does leave her and Raven staring at each other from opposite pillows, only a foot away from each other.

Raven looks smaller like this. With her hair mussed up, with no makeup on and her defenses down.

Clarke had had a crush on Raven, once. Raven had let her know that was never going to happen, in not the nicest way possible. Clarke even thinks it was the right call, with some distance from the heartbreak.

But just now she feels like she's looking into one of Monty's alternate universes, and it's sweet and awful at the same time.

"Are we okay?" Clarke asks softly.

Raven shrugs. "Are we?"

She doesn't mock Clarke, or shut her down without answering, or get up and leave the conversation.

This small level of honesty shouldn't be so remarkable, but.

From Raven, it kind of is.

"You have been riding me _so hard_ lately," Clarke says. "I don't remember the last time that we talked that you weren't making fun of me. And I try to take it with a smile, because otherwise it's all about how I'm no fun and I'm ruining everything for everyone else but -- Raven, it's exhausting when that's all I ever get from you." She balls her hand into a fist, under her pillow, where it won't show. "Are we even friends anymore?"

"We're friends," Raven says. "We're friends for one more week. Maybe the next two months. And then we're friends who are never going to see each other again."

The absolute certainty in her words takes Clarke's breath away.

"I guess." This part, Raven isn't as sure about, or isn't willing to admit to. _Like this is the bad part_ , Clarke thinks, and tries to brace herself, but she doesn't know what the hell could be worse than what Raven's already said. "I guess if I remind myself how annoying you are, I'm not going to miss you."

"Why do you have to miss me?" Clarke asks. "We're not going to be that far apart, you're in Boston and I'm in New Haven -- "

"Clarke, you're going to _Yale_ ," Raven says. "Don't pretend like you don't get why that's a problem."

"MIT's an amazing school," Clarke says. "It's not like you're going to some crappy state school -- "

"I almost did," Raven cuts her off.

"What?"

"I got into MIT, and I couldn't afford it," Raven says. "Story of my life. I get close enough to want something and not close enough to have it. I was going to turn down my acceptance and then I finally heard back about this scholarship I thought I'd lost out on -- "

"But that's great." Clarke scrambles up, and Raven sits back up too, wary, unwilling to give Clarke the upper hand. "You're going, what's the problem?"

"The problem? Is that I never _should_ have," Raven says. "I'm not like you. I was headed straight for one of those crappy state schools that you look down on so much, for my whole life."

"But you're not. You're going to MIT."

"Because I worked my _ass_ off. And I'm going to keep working my ass off, so no, there's not going to be girls' nights out down in _New Haven_."

Clarke shuts her eyes.

"Can't we at least see each other when we're both home?" she asks, because that's been the thought that gets her through the looming specter her friends' departure -- _you'll see then again in a few months -- just a few months -- ___

____

"Clarke, I'm not coming back to Seattle after this summer," Raven says. "It's not home for me. There's nothing for me to come back for."

Clarke swallows. Tries to catch her breath. "I guess I'm not worth coming back for."

There's a long silence, and then Raven says, "Yeah, I guess not."

Clarke feels her getting up from the bed, but she doesn't open her eyes. Listens to the sounds of Raven moving around the room, getting dressed, putting on her brace. Opening and shutting the door.

She doesn't open her eyes.

The alarm starts to chime.

"Nnnnrrrgh," Octavia groans from the next bed over. "Are you guys going to break up again tomorrow? Because if so I'm going to sleep in the boys' room."

Clarke gets up and takes a shower.

-

Clarke knows, for a fact, that her eyes and face look fine. She hadn't really cried in the shower, just heaved a few deep breaths like she was about to puke.

Even if she had cried, the warm water would have washed away the evidence.

But Bellamy locks eyes on her as soon as she comes down to the dining area for her unappetizing Best Western continental breakfast, and he frowns like he knows something is wrong.

Clarke smiles as best as she can -- a thin-lipped, flat-line smile -- and loads up on French toast fingers and jam packets in the hopes that Bellamy will leave her alone.

It doesn't work.

"You okay?" he asks, and wow, she must look terrible for him to ask outright, instead of nudging it out of her.

"Tired," Clarke says. "Your sister snores."

"You didn't tell her that, did you?"

"Do I look like I want to die?"

"Kind of," Bellamy says, "yeah."

Clarke's feeble attempt at a smile slips away, and she shrugs. "I don't think I'm going to be able to have the safe-driving talk with Raven. We'll just have to play keep away with the keys. Or we could all die! That would be an exciting vacation memory."

"Clarke."

"Miller and Monty didn't do any driving yesterday, they can't spend the entire trip in the backseat playing video games -- "

"Clarke."

" -- the whole point of a road trip is to do something besides what you do all the time -- "

"Clarke," Bellamy says, and his voice is so concerned that she can't handle it.

"Please don't make me talk about this," Clarke says. "Not right now. Okay? Not here."

Bellamy nods but he keeps watching her, as though to catch her if she falls apart. Like that's his responsibility, or anyone's but Clarke's.

"Okay," he says. "You know where to find me."

"Shotgun," Clarke says. "Like always."

They load up the van after breakfast. Bellamy tosses the keys at Miller, who catches them a split second before they hit his face.

"Give a man a head's up, Blake."

"What, and ruin our party trick?"

"Someday, you're going to throw something really important at me, and I'm going to let it fall."

"But you'll _let_ it fall," Bellamy says. "As a conscious decision. You'll still know I was tossing it to you."

"So you're saying I'm competent but a jerk."

"That's how I like my men."

"I'd tell you to get a room," Raven says. "But we literally just gave the rooms back. You should have used the room while you had it."

"But teacher," Miller says, "I didn't need to hook up during recess."

"Always take the hook up when you get a chance," Monty says. "You don't know when you'll get another one."

"Wait, so you guys didn't have a foursome last night?" Octavia asks.

Bellamy frowns. "Again, it's creepy when you joke about my sex life."

"Yeah, so do it some more," Raven says. "Louder and more specific this time."

 _God_ , how can Raven joke around like nothing happened?

Clarke mutters something to Monty about wanting to check out his DS, and takes the opportunity while he's babbling happily about the selection of games he has to crawl into the backseat.

It turns out that Clarke is terrible at whatever RPG Monty and Miller were obsessed with yesterday. Monty takes pity on her and swaps out the cartridge for a puzzle game. Clarke's usually pretty good at puzzles, but her attention keeps getting pulled away by Murphy giving her bad advice on how to play, by Raven and Octavia having a debate about the merits of living in the middle of the woods, by Miller and Bellamy arguing about -- 

Clarke looks up.

"Did you get us _lost_?" Clarke demands.

"We're not lost," Miller protests. "We're exploring alternative routes."

"Which is another way of saying lost."

"Told you so," Bellamy says smugly.

"Don't you start." Clarke gestures aggrievedly with the DS, which only upsets Monty. "I'm holding you responsible for this, too. You're shotgun. You're supposed to be navigating."

"I was," Bellamy says. "He didn't listen to me."

"Because you were wrong," Miller says.

"You were wrong."

"I'm man enough to admit that we were both wrong," Miller says.

"I'm not going to fall for that. I'm not admitting to being wrong when I wasn't."

"Bright side, Little Blake," Raven says. "Looks like you're going to get your 'living in the wilderness eating raw bears you killed with your hands' thing sooner than you thought."

"Don't eat raw bear," Monty says. "It probably has parasites."

"I would cook the bear first," Octavia says. "Duh. And we're not lost. There's a sign for the 101 _right there_."

There is, and the silence of shared sheepishness settles over the car as they all wonder why they didn't notice that first.

Or it does until Murphy says, "So much for my Lord of the Flies fantasy," which provokes a long conversation about _why would you want to be in Lord of the Flies, you'd be the first one killed_ and _I would clearly be Roger_ and _why the hell are you saying that like it's a good thing, Jesus Christ, we're in a van with a psychopath._

Clarke mostly tunes this out, except when she hears her name (Octavia suggests that she would be Ralph; Monty suggests that Bellamy is Ralph and Clarke is Simon; Miller suggests that Clarke is the _conch_ , which is too weird to process). She's going to have fun playing this stupid puzzle game if it kills her.

-

"Go to California, they said," Miller mutters at lunch. "Sunny beaches, they said. Shirtless guys everywhere, they said."

They're sitting on the patio of a restaurant right along the beach, which should have been scenic. But there's a low layer of clouds hanging across the entire sky, and Clarke is having to actively work not to shiver in her tank top.

"We're not in San Diego yet," Monty points out. "Maybe we haven't crossed the ideal-beach-weather threshold yet."

Their waitress comes back to the table in time to hear this. "You kids from out of town?" she asks, placing a Coke in front of Clarke.

Clarke discreetly pushes the Coke over to Monty. "We're from Seattle," she says.

"Ha." She puts another Coke in front of Clarke, and Clarke hands this one over to Octavia. "You ever hear of June gloom?"

"No?"

Another Coke. Clarke looks at the tray of drinks and doesn't see a lemonade. She frowns.

"Ha," the waitress says again, and walks off without taking their order.

Clarke passes her Coke off to Bellamy and steals his water.

He raises his eyebrows at her, but she raises hers back, and he sips at the soda with no further objection.

Monty types away on his phone. "Huh. Apparently June is terrible beach weather in southern California."

Clarke feels several people turn their eyes to her. She takes a drink of water, all practiced nonchalance.

"You came up with detailed bathroom break schedules but you didn't think to check the _weather_?" Miller asks.

Clarke shrugs. "Bellamy gave me the dates and the destination," she says.

"Thanks for throwing me under the bus," Bellamy says.

"Anytime."

"You guys weren't going to be able to go if it was later in the summer," Bellamy points out to Raven and Miller's betrayed faces.

"No, but we could have stayed in Seattle and had shitty weather for free," Raven says.

"Yeah, we should have been more frugal with Abby's money," Bellamy says.

"He has a point," Miller says. "Whatever else happens, we were pains in the asses to the Griffin family."

Raven rolls her eyes.

Clarke takes another sip of water and forces it down her throat.

"At least if it's cloudy we don't have to wear sunscreen," Raven says.

"Oh, hell no," Bellamy says, "You still have to wear sunscreen. You know what? Put some on right now."

Bellamy pulls a bottle of sunscreen out of his backpack, one of those enormous VALUE PACK deals. It's less of a bottle and more of a vat.

"Only if you rub it in for me," Miller says, making a kissy face at Bellamy.

Bellamy squirts some sunscreen onto his hand and wipes it over Miller's forehead. "Rub it in yourself. Who's next?"

"Yeah, no, pass." Raven leans back in her chair, out of Bellamy's reach.

Clarke figures she might as well play along, and anyway, she has a fair complexion and seventeen summer's of lectures about melanoma. She holds her hand out across the table and Bellamy squirts out some sunscreen for her.

"O?" he asks.

His sister doesn't answer. She's staring out at the ocean like the trapped woman in a selkie story.

Bellamy has some sunscreen in his hand, left over from dousing Miller, and he leans over and wipes some of it on Octavia's nose.

"What the fuck, Bell!" Octavia shouts. She tries to wipe the sunscreen off her face. It would look funny, the way she just spreads it around and gets her hair stuck in it, except that her expression and her motions are _furious_.

"Language, O," Bellamy says.

"No! I'm not going to watch my fucking language and you can't tell me to." She stands up so fast that her chair teeters.

"O," Bellamy says, in his low serious voice. "You need to sit back down -- "

"You can't tell me what to do," Octavia snarls. "You're a shitty brother and you're an even shittier dad, so do us all a favor and _stop. Trying._ "

She whirls around and stomps out of the restaurant.

Clarke steps on Bellamy's foot, as hard as she can.

He glares at her across the table, but she doesn't let up. It isn't like he couldn't shake her off and run after Octavia. But she's not going to help him do that. And while he might do it without her blessing, her direct condemnation is going to make him stop and think.

Clarke is vaguely aware of the rest of their friends making faces and avoiding eye contact with her, more vaguely aware of the rest of the restaurant staring at them.

But the important thing is Bellamy, and that's all she's focusing on.

After several long, silent seconds, Bellamy leans back an inch against his chair. He's still holding the VALUE PACK of sunscreen, white goop sticking to his fingers.

"You're the third least terrible parent I've ever had," Murphy says, out of nowhere, and Clarke isn't sure if she wants to thank him or _strangle him_. "If that helps."

Raven slams the butt of her knife against the table. "Jesus _fuck,_ Murphy, read the room."

"Dad, Raven's swearing," Murphy drawls. "I thought we didn't do that in this family."

"Shut up, Murphy," Clarke snaps. Murphy looks betrayed.

"Okay, Octavia's had her minute." Bellamy looks at Clarke. "I'm going after her now."

"No, you're not," Clarke says. "If she wants space then we'll give her space. She's sixteen, she can buy her own lunch."

Bellamy's jaw works.

"If she doesn't like it, then she shouldn't have left." Clarke flags down the waitress, who lumbers over as slowly as it is possible for a human to move. "Hi, we're ready to order now. Thanks."

No one mutinies, but the whole table is subdued as they place their orders, and the conversation does not pick again after the waitress leaves.

Clarke drinks her water and watches the ocean like that's the only thing on her mind.

-

Clarke tosses a ten and a five on the table when the check arrives and excuses herself to the bathroom. It's only in part for the sake of having a moment of quiet to herself; turns out, if you take a sip of water every time you need to hide your discomfort during the most awkward meal of your life, you're really going to need to pee by the end of it.

When she leaves the bathroom, Bellamy is waiting for her.

He steps forward as soon as she's got the door open, crowds her back inside and shuts the door behind them.

"You're not supposed to be in here."

"It's a unisex bathroom."

"That still means one person at a time."

Bellamy stares at her, unimpressed, and crosses his arms.

Clarke doesn't let herself get distracted by the arms. "You want to tell me what's really going on with Octavia?"

"You want to tell me why you looked like death this morning?" Bellamy shoots back. "I know it's got something to do with Raven, you might as well tell me before I ask her myself."

Clarke doesn't let herself get distracted by the blackmail, either. What does it matter if Bellamy confronts Raven, at this point? Raven's made her choice. Bellamy's only going to hurt himself running up against her walls on Clarke's behalf.

"Raven didn't swear at us and storm out of the restaurant," Clarke says. "I have to think Octavia is the more urgent problem, here."

"Glad you think of my sister as a problem."

"Are you telling me she's not?" Clarke says. She's hoping that Octavia will be waiting at the van when they leave the restaurant, because so far she hasn't texted any of them, and Clarke doesn't actually _want_ to let Octavia wander alone in a strange town for too long. "I know we said that we were going to keep going with this road trip in spite of the awkward, but this is beyond _awkward_. If your sister keeps acting out like this we have no choice but to take her home."

"We can't go back, Clarke."

"We can't let her run wild. If she's having real problems we need to take her home."

"We are taking her home!"

Clarke stares at him. Bellamy looks defeated, broken down by his own words, and Clarke doesn't understand them. Except to know that this is important.

"Bellamy?"

He runs a hand over his face and looks away from Clarke. Looks away again when his eyes meet his reflection in the mirror.

"This isn't a road trip," Bellamy says. "It's not a family vacation. I'm taking Octavia to San Diego to live with her biological father."

 _But you can't,_ Clarke thinks. A second later she thanks every deity she's ever heard of, and every last one of Abby's lectures about manners, for the fact that she hadn't said that out loud. Bellamy looks like he's one push away from crumbling, and she doesn't want to be that push.

"I thought she got on with your foster parents," she says instead. She'd met Bellamy and Octavia's foster family a few times: an older couple whose biological children had grown up and moved across the country. They took decent care of the Blake siblings, even if they didn't really _get_ them. Clarke never felt like that was a problem -- the Blake siblings had each other. They didn't need other people to understand them, just to put a roof over their heads.

"Diane got a diagnosis," Bellamy says gruffly. "Ovarian cancer. They don't think -- it doesn't look good. If she makes it another two years, they're going to be dealing with chemo and doctor's appointments. And then our social worker found O's dad, and he agreed to take her in."

"That's...good," Clarke says slowly, because it clearly isn't. "Right?"

"Yeah." Bellamy's voice is completely flat. "It's great."

"But what about you?" Clarke asks.

Something inside of Bellamy dies.

Clarke is immediately regretful, and almost as immediately pissed off. Why can't Bellamy let her look out for him _one time_?

"No, don't look at me like that. This is bullshit, Bellamy. I want to know who's taking care of you. I get to worry about you, you stupid bathroom-invading moron -- "

Bellamy blinks somewhere in the middle of Clarke's gathering fury, and it's like blowing on embers. The dead thing in his eyes is coming back to life, or at least thinking about a resurrection. He blinks again.

"Stupid moron is redundant." He doesn't sound aware of the fact that he's speaking.

"I'm using repetition for emphasis, dumbass. That's another one. Stop being an idiot and pretending you have to do everything by yourself. I want to know who's going to look out for you."

 _Confusion_ looks a lot better on Bellamy's face than _devastation_ , though it's still not what Clarke is going for. "Are you asking what's going to happen to me?"

"Yes! Obviously! What else would I be asking?"

Dead eyes again. Dammit. Clarke thought she was onto something with the _name-calling Bellamy into being a happier person_ thing.

On second thought, maybe it isn't surprising that didn't work.

"I thought you were asking -- what about me. To foster Octavia. Why I'm not taking her in."

"You're eighteen," Clarke says. "You're starting at UW in September. Unless they've got some incredibly lax dorm rules, you can't have a fish in your room. Let alone a little sister."

"I could have a fish. Does Yale not let you have fish?"

"That is the least important part of what I said." Clarke makes a stern face. "No one could possible expect you to take custody of Octavia."

Bellamy says, very quietly, "O did."

It's like clicking the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle into place without once looking at the picture on the box: the Blake siblings, who'd do anything for each other, who've been taking care of each other since they were kids, inseparable and loyal even when they couldn't stand each other. No way was Octavia going to let Bellamy escort her off to San Diego while he stayed in Seattle.

And no way was Bellamy going to do it, either.

"You tried, didn't you?" Clarke asked. "To get custody."

"They wouldn't let me," and she must have made a face at that, pity or sorrow or something else that isn't allowed, because Bellamy's voice gets hard and cruel. "All the reasons you said. You were right. You should be happy."

"I'm not happy about any of this," Clarke says. "None of this should ever have happened, okay? Not your foster mom getting cancer and not your mom dying and not your mom never being around in the first place. But it did all happen, and maybe Octavia getting a new start with her father and you getting to go to college is not the end of the entire world."

"She's my sister," Bellamy argues. "She's my responsibility."

"And you're doing the responsible thing and turning her over to someone who's in a better position to raise a teenager." Clarke huffs, before a horrible thought occurs to her. "He must be okay if the social worker signed off on him, right? He's not a scumbag, or -- "

"He's a math teacher," Bellamy says.

Clarke's heartbeat slows back down a notch. "So, what teenagers would think of as a scumbag. But not actually a scumbag. He's not going to sell her for drug money, or use her as an alibi for his serial killing, or -- "

"Jesus, Clarke, how do you come up with this shit?"

"Same documentary that told me about no-name motels under freeways." It comes out more bitter than she meant it to, bitter and sad.

Bellamy sighs. "I talked to him on the phone a couple of times. He seems okay. He's -- married." He smiles with one half of his mouth. "For twenty years."

"Oh, geez."

"Yeah. Guess that was why he didn't stick around. At least now we know."

"So he is a scumbag."

He shrugs. "He says, uh, he says his wife is sticking with him, they're going to work through it. They have a kid." Bellamy smiles wider, and sharper. "Octavia's got another brother."

"I doubt you're going to get replaced."

"I'm not worried about being replaced," Bellamy says. "I'm pretty sure she's just going to cut both of us out of her life."

"She's angry. She'll come around."

Bellamy doesn't answer.

She gives him a minute.

"You don't get it, Clarke. Even when we were kids, it was -- that was the plan. As soon as we're old enough we're going to get our own place. I used to tell Octavia about the house we'd have, and ask her what color she wanted the walls in her bedroom to be, and whether we'd have dogs or cats."

"That was up for debate?" Clarke asks.

"Mostly to mess with Octavia," Bellamy admits. "I'd tell her she'd have to clean the litter box."

"Which is way less gross than cleaning up after dogs, by the way."

Bellamy shakes his head, like Clarke is too ridiculous to be worth arguing with, but for a second he looks genuinely happy.

But only for a second.

"And then Mom died, and it was like it was a given. Of course I was going to take Octavia, as soon as I could. And then they told me that I couldn't."

"I'm never going to agree with you that that's a bad thing," Clarke says. "Sorry, but I won't. You're practically a kid and you deserve a life of your own. And Octavia deserves a chance at a stable home where people can provide for her."

Bellamy still looks like he wants to fight her, and fair enough. They're always willing to say the thing the other one doesn't want to hear, and Clarke loves that about them.

"But," she says, and Bellamy shifts his weight, telling her without telling her that he's listening. "I am sorry that she has to go so far away. I know you're going to miss her. And I'm sorry that you don't get that for yourself. The new family."

"You know I'm eighteen, right," Bellamy says. "I don't actually need a parent anymore."

"Bullshit. I will be your mom," Clarke says. "I am your mom now."

Bellamy winces. "That's even worse than Murphy calling me dad. Please never say that again."

"If you wouldn't pretend so hard that you don't need anyone to look out for you," Clarke says, "then I wouldn't need to."

"I don't need anyone to look out for me," Bellamy says. "But I guess it's not the worst thing."

Clarke smiles at him. "Come on. Let's go find Octavia, yeah?"

Bellamy nods.

There's a woman waiting outside for the bathroom. She gives them a very disapproving look as they leave.

Bellamy brushes past her without noticing, which means that there's no one to witness Clarke giving the judgmental woman the glare of a lifetime and flipping her off. After the day she's had, it feels better than it should, to force someone to back down.

-

Octavia is sitting on the hood of the aquamarine van when they exit the restaurant. The heels of her thick-soled boots are resting in dents that Clarke knows were not there an hour ago.

Clarke nods a greeting to Octavia, like they're acquaintances passing in the mall, and digs the keys out of her pocket. "Miller, you want another turn?"

Apparently her connection to Miller is nothing like as strong as the connection between Bellamy and Miller. Bellamy can throw things at Miller without warning and Miller will catch them; Clarke can't even hand off a conversation without Miller fumbling it.

Or maybe she's being too hard on herself. Maybe Miller would have dropped the ball on Bellamy right now too, considering he's distracted, assessing Octavia like she's a bomb and he might need to take cover. 

"What?" Miller says, when Monty nudges him. "No, I'm not driving anymore. Blake's going to nag me about getting lost again. You don't appreciate me, you don't deserve me."

"Fair enough," Clarke says. "I'll drive. Everyone went to the bathroom?"

She's expecting a chorus of people making fun of her, but everyone just nods or shrugs and shuffles into the car without comment.

"Well," Bellamy comments, as Octavia pulls the door shut behind her. "This should be fun."

"You said this crew could drive through hell together, right?" Clarke asks.

"Looks like we're going to find out."

-

They make it through San Francisco okay. No one asks to stop and play tourist, and considering the mood in the van that's not surprising. Murphy shows no signs of wanting to jump ship, and that _is_ surprising. Clarke would have figured he'd take the out, now that everyone's quiet and uncomfortable. Or maybe Murphy enjoys misery and awkward silences. If so, more power to him; someone ought to get something out of this road trip.

It starts raining along an empty stretch of road ten miles outside of some town which is not big enough to be on Bellamy's map or Clarke's GPS, not until she zooms way in. Clarke thinks, with a grim sort of humor, that at least now they've reached rock bottom. This is literally as bad as it gets; she can't even say _it could be worse, it could be raining._

That's when they blow a tire.

Bellamy's driving, and he doesn't panic, doesn't slam on the break or yell at Murphy to shut up when Murphy swears "fuck, what did you run over, a landmine?" though the rest of the van has Bellamy covered in that regard. Bellamy just steps off the gas, lets them gradually slow down, and pulls into the breakdown lane.

Once they're stopped, though, it's like he's used up his reserves. He turns the van off and leans his head back against the headrest. Shuts his eyes.

Clarke knows that look. That's _not now_. That's _this is one thing too many_.

That's her cue to take the lead.

"All right, everyone out of the car."

"It's raining," Miller complains.

"Yeah, and I didn't pack an umbrella," Raven says. "Since someone didn't warn us about the weather."

"Deal with it," Clarke says. "Climb out the driver's side so you don't get hit by traffic."

Bellamy pulls himself together enough to look at Clarke. She flaps her hands at him until he gets out of the van. She slides into his seat, careful over the gear shift, and engages the parking brake before stepping out of the car herself.

The backseat door opens and Clarke can hear Raven yelling at Murphy to move his ass. Raven may be hell-bent on not being friends with Clarke anymore, but she's got to know they can't change a flat with five people sitting inside the van.

"Do you have a spare?" Bellamy crouches down to examine the back left wheel, though it's obvious from where Clarke is standing that they can't keep driving on it.

"Is that a serious question?"

"You have two spares, don't you."

If Bellamy can force a joke, Clarke can force a laugh.

"Bad news," Clarke says, a little louder, as their friends start to group themselves around the van. She has some stupidly attractive friends; standing in the rain makes them look like models in a jeans commercial, instead of like a bunch of drowned cats. "We need to move the luggage to get to the spare."

She'd have loved it if her friends had immediately moved into action to start unloading the trunk.

What she gets instead is Raven and Miller exchanging a look, deciding between the two of them how the group is going to react.

It shouldn't upset her that they're _disrespecting her authority_. This isn't life or death; no one is marching into battle.

But it hurts, that she needs something from her friends and they have to debate if they'll give it to her.

She doesn't wait to see what they decide before pulling open the trunk. Luckily her duffel is right on top. She yanks on the strap and slides it over her shoulder; the ground around them is wet gravel and mud, nowhere to put anything down.

Monty grabs his bag next. Clarke decides Monty is her favorite. Miller's bag is right underneath it, and Monty half-grabs that one, too, before Miller steps up and takes it out of his hands.

Everyone else falls into line after that -- Miller takes Bellamy's bag in addition to his own, since Bellamy is still on the ground poking at the flat. Clarke opens the panel in the trunk and fetches out the jack.

"You got this or do you want me to do it?" Clarke asks.

"I've changed a tire before."

"Yeah, but it's gross out here," Clarke says. "You'll mess up your hair. And eye candy is ninety percent of the reason I asked you along."

"The way I remember it, I asked you."

"No, this is definitely my fault." It doesn't come out like a joke.

"Clarke." Bellamy looks like he's going to say something serious, but all he says is, "I got this, okay?"

"All right."

Clarke wants to give him some space after that, but -- it's not like there's a lot of space to give, standing by the side of the road. They're all crowded up against the median watching Bellamy, except for Octavia, whose newfound commitment to pretending to be an only child means she's developed a deep interest in oncoming traffic.

At least she's being quiet.

"God, have you ever seen a lug wrench before? I could have changed all four tires by now," Raven complains.

"Bully for you," Bellamy says, half under the van. "You and NASCAR will be very happy together."

"Not if I die of pneumonia because you are the slowest mechanic in the history of the universe."

"Raven." She doesn't look at Clarke at first, like she wants to remind Clarke of where they stand. "Bellamy's got it. You're not helping."

The look on Raven's face is pure poison, but Clarke has survived worse. She doesn't _need_ Raven to be her friend, and if that's not an option at this point, what's the use in holding out for it? She doesn't even need Raven to agree with her. She just needs to survive the week and get back home, and if Raven thinks Clarke is ganging up on her because she hurt Clarke's feelings -- then they'll still have survived the week.

So Clarke holds eye contact with Raven, knowing that her own expression is icy and hating it.

Raven looks away, anger radiating off her.

Funny, that that isn't enough of a warning sign. Raven's like a rattlesnake in the path, the tide rushing out before a tsunami; no one would make the mistake of messing with her now.

Maybe Raven is only obvious to Clarke, who knows her whether Raven likes it or not.

Or maybe Murphy just likes disasters.

"Yeah, Reyes, haven't you heard? No one likes a backseat driver."

Raven whirls on him. "You can shut your goddamn mouth, Murphy. You know whose fault it is that I'm not fixing the flat myself? Whose fault it is that I can't fucking _kneel_ on the side of the road? That I had to _drop out_ of track and field? That I need a fucking _leg brace_ to _walk_?"

"None of that is my fault," Murphy snaps, "so chill out."

" _Chill out?_ " Raven takes a step toward Murphy, and a second one. "Now you're a fan of _chilling out_ instead of street racing and running red lights -- "

"I wasn't driving." Murphy's volume rises to match Raven's. "I didn't tell Mbege to run that light -- "

"What, I'm supposed to believe you were trying to stop him? You weren't egging him on? Sure, you were drunk too, but you're the responsible one?" Raven sneers at him. "You're a fucking joke, Murphy. You could at least own up to it."

"I went to juvie, okay, you think that was a blast? And I came back and no one would talk to me and Mbege got shipped off to military school -- "

"Boo hoo, you got lonely. You should have _died_."

Murphy's jaw twitches.

That had to have hurt. It would have hurt anyone.

But he just takes a step back, brushes his thumb against his nose like the conversation has gotten boring and he's too cool for it.

"Funny," he says, "how people keep telling me that and I keep living anyway. Makes you doubt anyone gets what they deserve. Probably good news for you, Reyes."

Raven spits at him.

"Well, it's been real, but I think that's my cue to go." Murphy hefts his bag a little higher on his shoulder. "If Blake ever gets the car going again, don't bother stopping for me. I'd hate to think of any of you getting me off your conscience." He salutes once, sloppy, and starts walking.

Clarke could choke on the taste of the scene. Monty looks shell-shocked; Miller the same, but like he's trying to hide it. Octavia is still watching traffic like nothing else exists.

Clarke opens her mouth, no idea of what she's going to say, and then Bellamy stands up from the road and brushes his hands on his wet jeans.

"Let him go, Clarke." A little louder, as though everyone hadn't heard that, he adds, "We're ready, everyone load your stuff back up."

A few minutes later, the van loaded back up, they pass Murphy walking on the side of the freeway.

They don't stop.

-

"Look on the bright side," Miller says as they pull into the parking lot. His tone is meant to cheer everyone up, but it's the first thing anyone's said in an hour -- the previous last thing being "can you change the song?" and "yeah, okay" -- and acknowledging that they need a bright side doesn't do wonders for anyone's mood. "We get another chance to get banned from Best Western."

Bellamy rolls his eyes. "I'll try to contain my excitement."

Clarke had helped with the sets for Twelfth Night, so she'd seen the tech rehearsal, everyone dressed up and saying their lines but not truly performing. This feels like that -- the words and motions are correct, but every motion is halfhearted, empty.

"I'm down to raise hell on bland chain hotels," Raven says. "I'll bunk with the guys tonight."

The guys -- or at least Miller and Monty -- look surprised, but Miller rallies. "Make war, not love. I'm down."

"Monty," Clarke says, before Bellamy can react. "You mind sharing with us? Fair warning, Octavia snores."

"Uh -- sure. I can sleep through anything." Monty's marking his lines, too, but at least he has her back, even if he doesn't know why she needs it. Or maybe he does; she has smart friends. They can see how bad an idea it would be to make Bellamy and Octavia share a room.

Raven is smart. Raven should have seen that for herself. Which cuts all the deeper, that she'd rather avoid Clarke than look out for Bellamy.

"Great." Clarke grabs her duffel out of the trunk. The canvas is still damp from the rain. "Let's get checked in."

The guy at the front desk takes several excruciating stabs at making small talk. Clark leaves him hanging. She doesn't have the resources for her own well-being, let alone a stranger's.

Bellamy watches her closely through the entire transaction, but directs his question to the entire group. "Let's drop our stuff in the rooms and meet back here for dinner."

Clarke nods at Bellamy and does not say, _there is no way in hell that's happening._

Bellamy tries to linger over taking the room key for the boys-plus-Raven-minus-Monty room. Clarke thinks he's getting ready to give her a pep talk, and she can't stand the thought. It would _work_ , is the thing, and she can't stand to be cheered up right now. She can't stand for Bellamy to cheer her up, when he's going through so much worse.

So she lifts the key from his hand and says, "see you in a bit," and hurries for the elevator before Bellamy can realize they're all going to the same floor.

"Well, this is the same room as last night," Monty says.

"Yesterday's generic painting was wildflowers," Clarke says.

"Oh, my mistake." Monty grins. "Totally different room."

Octavia drops her bag in front of the door and climbs into bed fully dressed.

"It's a little early?" Monty asks.

"No, I think Octavia has the right idea." Octavia opens her eyes and glares at Clarke. Monty, standing by the entrance, doesn't see it. "Car rides tire me out. Can you tell everyone we're not going to dinner?"

"Yeah, sure." Monty sounds confused, but he doesn't ask. He nudges Octavia's bag so it's out of the way of the door and gives Clarke a tentative thumbs up before leaving.

Octavia snores, loud and very fake -- Clarke is more than qualified at this point to judge.

"The last thing I want to do is talk," Clarke tells her. Octavia snores again.

Clarke waits five, ten minutes for everyone else to leave the hotel. Then she heads downstairs and walks down the street, looking for a restaurant where one person eating alone won't stand out too much.

-

Clarke lingers over her third glass of lemonade, trying to feel mature and self-sufficient instead of just sorry for herself. She's pretty sure _teenage girl reading a book in a rundown restaurant_ is a scene from a bad art film, not a thing that has ever happened in real life. But if it means she returns to the hotel too late to run into any of her friends, it will be worth it.

So of course as soon as Clarke steps into the lobby she sees Bellamy frowning down at Sherlock Holmes paperback. He looks up, transfers his frown to Clarke.

She drops into the seat next to him and says, "Spoiler alert, Holmes was the real killer all along."

"I thought you were going to stop with that joke after you accidentally ruined _The Murder of Roger Ackroyd_ for me."

"I'm doubling down on my bad idea. Can't show it was an accident. Like a cat that falls off something and pretends she meant to do it the whole time."

"Maybe you shouldn't commit to bad decisions."

Clarke drums her fingers on the arm rest next to her. "We agreed we can't cancel the road trip."

Bellamy snorts.

"But you mean Raven."

"I mean Raven."

Clarke thinks about the ends of things. The end of high school, the end of childhood, the end of the Blake family, the end of her life as she knows it.

The end of one friendship is a very small thing, against all of that.

"She told me she doesn't want to be my friend anymore."

"What? When?"

"After the summer. Or maybe after this trip." Clarke blinks. "You mean when did she say that? This morning."

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to Yale, I guess?"

"That's not that far from MIT."

Clarke licks her lips. "I don't think it's about geography."

Bellamy nods with understanding but not agreement. It hurts Clarke a little to watch, because she had been so slow to understand, because she's half afraid that she does agree, somewhere deep inside.

"Do you want me to talk to her?" Bellamy says it like he already knows what the answer will be.

Clarke shakes her head once, a tight smile on her face and her fingers coming to rest briefly over Bellamy's. "Do you want me to talk to Octavia?"

Bellamy weighs the offer before rejecting it. "We're going to hit San Diego tomorrow. I'm afraid of doing anything before that."

"If it's only mostly broke, don't fix it?"

"Mostly broke is still a little bit working." Bellamy sighs. "Dammit. How is this my life?"

"Because -- there is no fate, or God." Bellamy's looks screams _that's supposed to help?_ "If there was any kind of power organizing the universe, it would see that you deserve better, and you would have better. You don't. Therefore, there is no God."

"Are you saying my purpose in life is to prove that life has no purpose? Because I think that's a pretty significant contradiction."

Clarke rests her head on Bellamy's shoulder. He slumps over a little so she doesn't have to crane her neck as far.

"What if we kept driving?" Clarke says. "Hit San Diego and don't stop."

"I think if we drag this circus to Mexico I will kill someone."

"No, we'll drop everyone off in San Diego. Monty and Miller and Raven can start new lives as surfers and be Octavia's guardian angels."

"That's a spinoff I would watch."

"And then we keep driving. You and me and Mexico. That wouldn't be so bad."

Clarke can practically hear Bellamy smile. "You forget I had Spanish with you last year, gringa."

"Yeah, but your Spanish is good. We'd be fine."

"Yeah. We would." Bellamy rests his chin on the top of her head. "You know we will be anyway, right? Fine."

"You don't know that. There is no fate, remember?"

"I _do_ know it. Because I know you. You're going to be fine in college."

"Maybe I wish I could be fine right here," Clarke admits.

"Well, I'm not going anywhere. As established, UW owns me at this point. So you know where to find me."

Clarke is going to be incredibly surprised if there isn't a transfer to a San Diego school in Bellamy's future, but -- if it's not a surprise, then she still does know where to find him. And it turns out it isn't that hard, driving across the country for Bellamy.

"Yeah," Clarke says. "I do."

-

By the time she heads back up to her room, Octavia has turned the lights off and crawled under the covers -- once again starfished out to prevent anyone from sharing with her.

Monty comes back to the room while Clarke is changing into her pajamas, and after a flurry of apologies on both sides, they settle down and Monty teaches her a card game. It uses two decks and Clarke is lousy at it.

"You know," Clarke grumbles, as Monty stops her turn and takes over, again, "after walking in on me naked, you could at least let me win."

"You were barely naked," but Monty blushes all the same. "I think I saw half of one shoulder."

Clarke bats her eyelashes at him. "That's my technique. Leave them wanting more."

Monty bursts out laughing, then looks guiltily at Octavia.

"I'm pretty sure she's pretending to be asleep so she doesn't have to share a bed," Clarke tells him.

"Then it would be rude of me to call her bluff." Monty plays about a dozen cards before he runs out of moves and nods for Clarke to take her turn.

"You're supposed to call bluffs. I thought a card shark like you would know that."

"I'm bad at poker," Monty says. "Probably due to the aforementioned discomfort with confronting people who are lying to me."

"We are definitely playing poker sometime. I need my revenge."

"That sounds fair."

Monty destroys her, and they play a few hands of rummy so Clarke can save face.

"I'm really glad I'm here," Monty says after a few games.

"Even after today?"

Monty shrugs. "Today was awkward. But -- I don't know. We're transitioning to something else. It's not going to be painless. Doesn't mean I don't want to be here at all."

"I guess."

Monty chews over a thought. "Have you ever been dumped by a friend? Not that you were dating or wanted to date them, but where they don't want to be your friend anymore?"

Clarke's face spasms. She tries to smooth it out but -- she's not sure how convincing it is. She feels twisted, inside out. "Yeah."

"It's the worst. You don't even have Taylor Swift songs to comfort you, and everyone says you were just friends. Like there's a limit to how sad you get to be -- "

Clarke nods.

"Anyway. I thought my summer was going to suck and then I'd go off to college alone and that would suck too. And instead I'm on this deeply weird family road trip collecting a lot of stories I can use in future games of 10 fingers."

Clarke smiles. "Oh yeah, I think 'never have I ever taken a selfie with Bigfoot' is a real popular one."

"Never have I ever changed a tire in the rain."

"You didn't actually change the tire."

"It was a group effort."

"Never have I ever broken into a hotel pool."

"Exactly." Monty smiles at her, brilliant like the sun. "And if we can survive this trip, we can survive college."

Clarke reaches out and grips Monty's shoulder. "Thanks, Monty."

"Thanks, dad." Monty purses his lips. "You know, sometimes I forget we're the same age?"

"I am older than my years."

"Not to be that guy? But everyone feels like that. You should try being seventeen sometime."

"That sounds like very irresponsible parenting."

"If you've done a good job raising us, we can handle a week without parental guidance." Monty studies his cards. "Also, you know, the whole part where you didn't raise us and shouldn't feel that level of responsibility for us, but I think that has to be one of those 'agree to disagree' things."

"We get to San Diego tomorrow," Clarke points out. "Maybe once we're there and no one has died, then we can go have fun."

-

Clarke wakes up in the middle of the night with the disquieting feeling that someone is in the room with her -- that is, someone besides Monty, who makes a fantastic little spoon. Clarke disentangles herself from his sleeping form, cursing her inner sleep cuddler and her inability to wrangle a bed to herself.

There are half a dozen things that look spooky in the dark, but glaring into the room reveals each on to be harmless -- a bulge in the curtains over the A/C unit, Monty's hoodie on the back of a chair, the closet door cracked open to reveal a complimentary bathrobe...

Nothing is there that shouldn't be, and yet the horrible feeling of wrongness grows in the pit of Clarke's stomach, in the back of her throat.

She sits upright, the brush of her skin against the sheets loud in the silence of the room.

"Monty, wake up." Her voice hurts her ears.

"Mmphm?" Monty sits up, his eyes still closed. "Whazzit?"

"Octavia's gone."

-

Monty goes left down the hall, Clarke goes right -- if the thing that woke her up was the door shutting, than Octavia only has a minute's head start.

Clarke pauses to rap on the door to room 327. As soon as she hears someone coming to open it, she starts walking again.

Miller sticks his head out. "You are really bad at ding dong ditch, Griffin."

"Octavia's gone," Clarke calls over her shoulder. Miller flips on a light switch, raising complaints that Clarke doesn't stick around to decipher. "I'm taking the stairs down to the lobby."

Her phone rings as she enters the stairwell, Miller's duck lips popping up on screen.

"Any chance she went out for some snacks?" Miller asks, as soon as Clarke answers.

"She took her bag."

"Shit. Okay. I'll check the lobby and ask the front desk. See if there's a cab stand or anything. Raven's going to check the diner next door." Some muffled disagreement from the other end of the line, as Clarke clomps down the last of the stairs and emerges on the ground floor. Since Miller's got the lobby covered, she turns for the exit. "You can sit your ass down and not panic."

It does not take notorious murderer Sherlock Holmes to figure out who Miller is talking to. "Tell Bellamy that someone needs to stay in the room in case Octavia changes her mind and comes back." Clarke suppresses a shiver, despite the coat she threw over her pajamas. The night is colder than June gloom can account for.

There's no sign of a teenage runaway in the parking lot -- no taxis, no figures dashing through the shadows. Clarke starts to jog around the building. There was a bus stop on the main road; she'd walked past it on her way to dinner.

"Nothing so far," she mutters, as much to herself as to Miller.

No Octavia in the front of the building, only a worn-out couple pulling a sleeping toddler out of their sedan. Clarke walks close enough that she can sneak a peek in the window. The couple barely glances at her, and Clarke gives them a polite smile. She feels ridiculous with herself for worrying that Octavia is going to stowaway with strangers or steal -- 

"Oh, _fuck_ ," Clarke swears. The toddler fusses, and the dad gives Clarke a dirty look.

She hurries away, heading for the bus stop just in case. At the same time, she slips her left hand into her right coat pocket, clumsy, before switching her phone to her left hand.

"Please tell me that was one of those good _oh, fucks_ ," Miller says over the line, "and not a bad _oh, fuck_."

The bus stop is deserted.

"My keys are gone." Clarke turns on her heels and heads for where the van should be.

By now Miller has reached the lobby. She listens to him charm the front desk employee, asking where they'd find a cab and whether he'd seen a dark-haired teenage girl.

There are limits to Miller's charm, though, and at the first sound of suspicion in the employee's voice, Miller cuts his losses.

"No dice," Miller tells Clarke. "I don't suppose that Octavia is sleeping in the van because she's gotten attached to it."

"The van is gone."

Miller breathes loudly. "Okay. Your paranoid mom must have installed a tracker in that thing."

"My paranoid mom did install a tracker, yeah."

"Why do you make that sound like more bad news?"

"Because if we activate the tracker, it calls the police."

"Shit." Miller breathes loudly into the phone. "I've got Monty, grab Raven and we'll meet back in our room to figure something out, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," but Clarke doesn't want to hang up. It's nice, having a friend's voice in her ear.

She could ask him to stay on the line. He would do it, if she asked.

But she can't ask someone to stay on the phone with her because she's confused, and hurt, and betrayed. She doesn't _need_ it. She doesn't _want_ to need it.

Except she is confused, and hurt, and betrayed, and walking around at night in her pajamas.

 _You should try being seventeen sometime_.

"Hey, Miller?" 

"Yeah?"

"What was that monologue you had in Twelfth Night? You know, um -- "

"The totally overdone one?" Miller says dryly.

"Yeah." Clarke shoves her fist deeper into her pocket. "That one."

Miller sighs. "The shit I do for you, Griffin," but before she can apologize or bribe him or hang up, he starts, voice low and urgent enough to send a chill up her back, "If music be the food of love, play on -- "

Clarke picks up the pace, reaches the diner by the time Miller gets to _'tis not so sweet now as it was before_ ; lingers outside until he gets to the big finish. She can hear someone clapping on the other end of the line, probably Monty.

"You know, you're a lot better at acting than you were at pee-wee soccer."

"We can't all be Renaissance women."

"I thought that was the whole point of Shakespeare," Clarke says. "To let men be Renaissance women."

Miller snorts. "You're a mess, Griffin."

"No argument here. I'll see you back at the hotel."

"Yeah," Miller says. "See you in a minute."

Clarke finds Raven inside the diner, harassing a waitress into looking at her phone.

"I was supposed to meet her here. You're _sure_ you didn't see her?" If Miller's strategy is _charm_ , Raven's is _threaten_.

"Raven," Clarke calls out, and Raven scowls as she looks over. Then her expression softens.

The waitress makes a hasty get away, glaring at Clarke by association. Clarke hardly notices; she'd take a thousand glares from strangers over one from Raven.

"We have to go."

"Okay." Raven walks slowly to the entrance, and Clarke waits. She can only imagine how Raven's leg feels with only a few hours of sleep.

"What's the story?" Raven asks, once they're outside.

"My keys are missing," Clarke says. "So is the van."

"Damn. When Little Blake goes rogue, she doesn't half-ass it."

"No." Amusement creeps into Clarke's voice against her will. "Commitment has never been Octavia's problem."

"Your's either." Raven snorts. "It's a clash of the titans."

"I already know how you feel about me," Clarks says, as stiff and emotionless as she can manage. It's like opening her mouth and having Abby pop out, and she hates every second of it.

Raven doesn't answer right away. Her breath comes out of her nostrils hard, like everything she has is focused on the walk back to the hotel, like there's nothing left for someone she's already written off.

But then they're in the elevator, riding back up to the 3rd floor, and Raven says, "I always liked that about you. Even when it made you a pain in the ass," and she steps off the elevator before Clarke can think of anything to say.

-

Bellamy, true to form, is a nervous wreck pretending he isn't a nervous wreck. He's pacing up and down the hotel room while Miller watches, his arms crossed over his chest and a heavy look on his face like he isn't above sitting on Bellamy to stop him from doing something stupid and he wants everyone in the room to know it.

Monty is perched on the desk, googling something on his phone. Clarke catches the words "hack" and "GPS". She gives him a skeptical look.

Monty shrugs at her. "I like to feel useful."

"Anything promising?"

"Not yet."

"Keep looking." Clarke doubts he'll find anything that lets him hack the car's tracker with his cell phone, but someone ought to have a shred of optimism. Clarke likes feeling useful, too. "Anyone else have any ideas?"

"They have cameras in the parking lot," Miller says, which had escaped Clarke's notice. She wonders if he'd gone outside while she was fetching Raven, or if he'd noticed when they arrived that evening. "They might show us which way she went."

"Which is almost as useful as knowing what color shirt she was wearing," Raven says. "We're right off the freeway, chances are she went that way. It doesn't tell us where she's going."

"Probably for the best since we aren't going to be able to see the footage," Monty pipes up, without looking away from his phone. "I doubt they show their footage to anyone but the cops."

"No cops," Bellamy snaps. "O's got enough shit on her record."

"No one is calling the cops," Clarke says.

"No calling the cops, really?" Miller asks. "Ever? Because if O doesn't show up in a day or two, she's in real danger. I know no one wants to see her hauled off to juvie or a child shrink, but it's better than letting her stay lost for who knows who to find her."

Clarke feels an ugly knot in her stomach at the idea. But Bellamy's face is outrage carved in stone, Raven's carved to match.

"We're not there yet," Clarke says firmly, to squash an unproductive argument. "For now, our best bet is to figure out where Octavia went and get her ourselves."

"Are we sure she's gone?" Monty asks. "Maybe she wants some space and she'll come back in the morning. Why would she leave for real?"

Clarke makes eye contact with Bellamy, who has finally stopped pacing long enough for eye contact to be possible. She tries to convey that she isn't going to share anything that was shared with her in confidence in a bathroom, but that this might be a good time for Bellamy to share, as it is an emergency and everyone's going to find out when Octavia doesn't come back home with them anyway.

She has no idea what her facial expression looks like right then, except that it must not be very subtle.

"Okay," Raven says loudly. "Bellamy and Clarke are keeping secrets. We could ignore that and move on. Or, you know, one of you could _tell us_ if you know something helpful, since we all dragged our asses out of bed at two in the morning to help."

"Raven," Clarke says. "Drop it."

"It's okay, Clarke." Bellamy runs both hands through hair that is already standing up in every direction. "They're going to find out. They deserve to know."

But having made the decision, the words well up in his throat, choking him.

Everyone watches, gives him space to swallow his misery, and Clarke can't stand it any longer. She throws herself forward without knowing if she is sparing Bellamy or pushing him further into the blast radius.

"We're taking Octavia to live with her biological father," Clarke says bluntly. "She's not thrilled about that."

Raven's outrage transmutes into shock. Monty drops his phone, and bangs both knees and both elbows on the desk scrambling to retrieve it. Even Miller, who Clarke half-expected to know, looks unsettled by the news.

"Oh, fuck," Miller says. "And that's one of those bad _oh, fucks_ ," he clarifies to Clarke, who stares at him flatly: _there is literally no other kind of oh, fuck_.

"Thanks for reminding me how terrible my life is." Bellamy sounds like he might die any moment now.

"The situation is bad because Octavia is upset and alone," Clarke says. "Not because of any one person's inherent value as a family member."

Bellamy looks at her like she made an inexcusably bad pun, but Miller and Raven both have approval in their eyes.

Monty rubs his forehead -- Jesus, where didn't he hurt himself on the desk? Clarke decides to challenge him to Twister or DDR when she wants to get her revenge, instead of poker -- and looks at his phone like it's counting down to an explosion.

"Um, guys? You need to see this." Monty hands his phone to Clarke, and everyone else crowds around her to read over her shoulder, because all of her stupid friends are taller than her.

Her first thought is _when did Monty get Murphy's number_? Her second thought is to berate herself for not getting it; he'd been traveling in her van for a day and a half, after all. She should have looked out for him at least that amount. Her third thought is to marvel at the fact that Monty apparently saved him down as _J.A. Murphy_ , to wonder if Monty knows Murphy's middle name, or if that's a joke of some kind, and what name Monty has for Clarke in his contacts.

All of this processes in the background of Clarke's brain, while her eyes take in a blurry nighttime photograph of Jake Griffin's ugly aquamarine van in an even uglier parking lot.

Underneath the photo is a series of texts, the most recent from one minute ago.

_Figure there can't be two of these fuck ugly vans in the world_

_You might want to know there's a tiny girl inside playing pool_

_Can't imagine you're hanging out at a truck stop_

The fourth message is GPS coordinates, and Clarke presses it to open the map and see how far they have to go. 51 minutes by car, which would be less of a problem if they had a car. It also means Octavia leaving wasn't the sound that woke Clarke up, and she's grumpy with herself. How could she have slept through Octavia running away?

A new text pops up on the top of the screen: _tell Blake we're even_

She doesn't click on it. It isn't for her eyes.

"There's not going to be a bus for hours," Bellamy says. "Assuming we can find one at all."

"We'll take a cab," Clarke says with more confidence than she feels. "Me and Bellamy. The rest of you stay here. If we're not back by check out, get the rooms for another day. Here," and she digs out her hotel room key and Abby's credit card. "It's on file, but in case you need it."

Miller nods at her and slides both cards into his wallet.

"Is Octavia's dad expecting her tomorrow -- today?" Clarke corrects, because it's well after one o'clock.

Bellamy jerks his head: _yes_.

Clarke pulls out her phone and sets an alarm for eight o'clock. "If we haven't resolved this by then, you'll call him in the morning and tell him we got delayed. Car trouble. If you text him now it'll look like an emergency."

"It is an emergency."

"It's a time-sensitive irritation," Clarke says.

Someone laughs darkly, but Clarke doesn't catch who; she's focused wholly on Bellamy.

"What makes you think you can get her to come back?" Bellamy asks, arms in front of his chest like a shield.

"I've got you."

"I'm not her favorite person right now, remember?"

"Yes, you are. Just because she's mad and hurt doesn't mean she doesn't love you. People don't abandon people they love."

"Sure they do," Bellamy says bitterly. "They go off to college and they send people away -- "

"You're not betraying Octavia by having a life. You can't adopt her and you can't drop out of school to follow her to San Diego. But you're still her brother, all right? And she knows that. Deep down. Maybe really, really deep down," and Bellamy makes a face, which gives Clark the courage to go softer and more vulnerable. "Change is not the same thing as abandonment, okay? She might go away, she might hurt you, but she's going to come back. She's always going to come back."

Bellamy looks at her before nodding slowly.

"There's a cab on the way," Monty says, phone pressed against his ear.

"Thanks, Monty," Clarke says, and impulsively gives him a hug. He hugs back, squeezes once quickly and lets her go, and Miller swoops in to give her an enormous bear hug that lifts her off her feet.

"Number one person in a crisis," Miller says. "Why weren't you our stage manager?"

"I was too busy," Clarke's voice is muffled against his shoulder. "Doing your mom."

"You're really bad at jokes."

"But I'm really good at doing your mom."

Miller drops her with an exaggerated groan and goes off to slap Bellamy on the back. It sounds more painful than supportive, but whatever works.

To Clarke's surprise, Raven steps in front of her, face clouded and thoughtful.

"You're pretty smart, Yale."

"I'm no MIT, but I get by." Clarke feels taut, pulled tight by something Raven wants from her, by her own uncertainty if she wants to give Raven anything, if she even can.

The moment lasts a heartbeat too long, and then Clarke starts to turn away at the same time Raven steps forward. The resulting hug is clumsy and lopsided, until Clarke thinks _screw it_ and twists until she can throw her arms back around Raven.

Raven really is all sharp angles. Her chin digs into Clarke's shoulder and her fingers stab into Clarke's back and Clark shuts her eyes and doesn't care, at all.

"Guys? Your cab is here," Monty says.

Clarke pulls herself away from Raven.

"Go get Little Blake," Raven says, forcing her brave smile. "I owe her all of the crap for waking me up in the middle of the night."

"Yeah, okay," Clarke says. "We'll be back."

-

The cab driver has second thoughts as soon as he sees Bellamy, which multiplies up to sixteenth thoughts when he sees Clarke. "You kids sure you're supposed to be out this late?"

"Please," Bellamy says, sounding bored and much less worried than Clarke knows him to be, "I stay up later than this during finals."

The driver settles after that, if not happy then at least buying that they're college students. Which they are, in a way, but Clarke's eighteenth birthday isn't for another two months, and she wouldn't want to drive a minor around in the small hours of the morning if she were in his place.

And then they're -- in a cab, driving, with nothing they can do to help the situation, and it comes crashing down on Clarke that it's the small hours of the morning and she had a long, stressful day.

"Hey, scootch over," she says.

Bellamy gives her a weird look but does scoot into the middle seat.

"I want to use you as a pillow."

"You're going to sleep?" he asks, as Clarke settles her head on his shoulder. "Now?"

"Might as well be well-rested before battle."

"Thanks for making my family sound like a war-torn saga."

"Hm. Troy. Have to go get Helen back."

"I'm going to remind you that you said that when you're awake enough to appreciate how creepy it is."

Clarke doesn't fully sleep; she dozes, jerking awake when the cab slows or her head slips off Bellamy's shoulder. She keeps meaning to tell Bellamy that he can lean on her, but doesn't manage to mumble more than a word or two at a time.

He probably knows already.

The cab rocks up and down as they hit a dip, and the driver says, suspicion churning up again, "You sure this is the place?"

Clarke opens her eyes. The first thing she sees is her father's van.

"This is it," she says, and makes eye contact with the cabbie in the rear view mirror. She pulls out her wallet and hands him two hundred dollar bills. "Keep the change."

The suspicion drops off his face. "You need me to wait?"

"No, thanks."

Bellamy snorts as they get out of the cab. "Isn't it amazing how money makes problems disappear."

"That's my superpower," Clarke says. "Having money."

"Yeah, no. 'Having money' doesn't crack your top ten most impressive qualities."

"Save the sweet talk for Octavia," Clarke says. "You already know you've got me. She's the one you need to convince."

Bellamy breathes in deeply, looking at the entrance of the bar. It's a sketchy place. There are four lights in the parking lot, three of which are burned out. Clarke can't even see inside; the windows are plastered with posters for musical performances that happened decades ago.

For all that, it's decently busy. They're across the highway from a truck stop, and while they watch, a couple motorcycles pull in, their riders stumbling towards the door like this is not the first stop of the night.

"I think you should go first," Bellamy says.

"Me? But you're -- " 

"I'm the ultimatum," Bellamy says. "If I blow it, she's not coming with us, not without it getting ugly. But if you strike out I can still take a shot." He rubs a hand over his face. "Christ. Does that make sense?"

"You definitely should have napped on the ride. But yeah." She pops up on tiptoes to give him a hug, brief but firm, getting one strong whiff of his neck.

Then she steps back, squares her shoulders and tugs her shirt even. Tries to settle into the person she needs to be, whoever that is.

"I'm going in."

"Again," Bellamy tells her, "this isn't actually a war."

He doesn't manage a smile.

-

Clarke is not as sheltered as some people would think -- certainly not as sheltered as she has orchestrated her mother into believing. She's had alcohol before. She's been to parties.

But the scene that hits her when she steps through the door of the dive bar is completely foreign. The smell of beer is strong enough to gag on. The air is hazy, never mind that smoking in bars has been illegal for longer than Clarke has been alive. The people at the bar are sitting in a slumped, careless way. No one looks over when she enters, not even the bartender, which is a relief. If the cab driver was suspicious about her age, a bartender ought to sniff her out in a second -- though given the general tone of the bar, maybe he wouldn't care.

Clarke lets her eyes adjust, then turns toward the loudest corner of the room. There's a pool table along the far wall, next to a jukebox that has actual records in it and a Pac-Man machine with an Out of Order sign that is yellowed with age.

A good-sized crowd is gathered around the pool tables, watching a heavy-set guy in a bandana line up a shot. He works his cue a few times, inching slightly over to perfect his angle, and takes his shot.

The cue ball dances harmlessly around the table, hitting nothing but felt.

There's a loud groan from the spectators.

"Aw, tough luck," Octavia says. She hops down from the edge of the next pool table where she'd been sitting. "I'm sure you're good at something, but leave pool to the cool kids, okay?" She sinks the 3 ball, almost without trying, and then moves on to the 8 ball -- the only solid left on the table. She lands it as easily as the last one.

Because Octavia is a pool hustler. Of _course_ she is. Clarke might have been proud of her for it, under other circumstances.

"Would you look at that, another win." Octavia smirks and holds out a hand. "Pay up."

The guy grumbles and places a twenty in her hand.

Octavia doesn't budge. "And?"

He grumbles more, and hands her a beer.

Octavia's smirk widens. She takes a long sip. Something about the loose way she throws her head back, the easy way her throat works, makes Clarke think it isn't her first of the night. Though she can't be that wasted, if she's winning.

"All right!" Octavia cries, after she's drained half the beer. There's a small cheer; apparently she has fans. "Who's next?"

A couple of people in the crowd move like they're volunteering, but Clarke calls out, as loud and authoritative as she can:

"I am."

That gets the smirk off Octavia's face. There's a rustling from the crowd, but Clarke isn't sure what they make of another underage girl invading their space. She doesn't risk looking at them to find out. She keeps her eyes square on Octavia's.

After a second, Octavia grins again, wild and wolfish. Some animal part of Clarke's brain wants to protect her throat, her belly, all her vulnerable parts. She doesn't let herself move.

"Clarke. Didn't think this was your kind of scene. I should have known you'd stick your nose wherever you wanted." Octavia sets her beer down. The thunk reverberates loudly in Clarke's ears. "Where's my brother?"

"Outside," Clarke says. "I wanted to talk with you, first."

"Sure you did." Octavia holds her pool cue like a weapon, like she could do some damage with it if she needed to. "What pisses you off more, that I took your car? Or that I ruined your happy little plan?"

"Yeah, if you think that everything has been happy, you don't get to call me oblivious." She steps forward and takes a cue off the rack. Passes by Octavia and takes a sip of her beer to watch the way Octavia's eyes go hard and narrow.

"Poor little rich girl. Should I apologize that my life doesn't make a good tourist destination?" Octavia twirls the pool cue around. "Or should I tell you to fuck off?"

"You should quit stalling and rack the balls." Clarke reaches into the nearest corner pocket and pulls out the balls inside, rolls them along the table to Octavia. "Unless you want me to break."

"By all means." Octavia rolls a ball along the table, with more force than required. "I know you're used to having everything handed to you."

Clarke finishes reclaiming all of the balls and racks them with the triangle that someone hands her.

Then she bends low over the table and lines up her shot, trying to remember every drunken, rambling lecture that Monty had ever given about geometry and pool. Monty was good at theory but not great at delivery. Still, there had been eight months where Finn's basement, with its beaten up pool table, was the go to place for parties. Clarke learned more from Monty about pool than about weird two deck card games, at least.

She exhales, and breaks.

It's a good break. She has her pick of the table, so she goes with stripes and sinks another balls before her turn ends.

Octavia sinks two in quick succession, but Clarke doesn't let herself get worried. The early game is the easiest, when there's all kinds of shots to choose from. Later on is when it will get hard, when shots are scarce. Clarke tells herself that her superior patience will serve her well, but -- the flush on Octavia's skin, and the bulge in her pocket, says she's not an easy target.

So maybe Clarke is a little vindictive, or at least a little strategic, when she tells Octavia, "Bellamy told me about your dad."

Octavia's shot goes wide, the 14 ball glancing off the edge of the table a good five inches from the side pocket.

Octavia glares pure murder at Clarke, who looks back at her calmly.

"Of course he did," Octavia spits. "He did never tell you to stop sticking your nose in and watching our sad pathetic lives." She shakes her head, stalking off before whirling back around to face Clarke. "I'm fucked up, but at least I _know_ I'm fucked up. I don't pretend like I can fix everyone because I'm so much better than they are."

"If I was here to fix you I'd have brought backup. Maybe some riot police. I'm just here to talk. And play pool."

"Sure you are. Whatever makes you feel better."

Clarke takes a shot, missing it by the skin of her teeth. Inside, her doubts are multiplying, but she keeps her cool outside. She should totally have been in Twelfth Night. "What do you say we make this interesting?"

Octavia snorts. She can't possibly know how much she sounds like her brother when she does that. "I don't want your mom's money."

"Fine," Clarke says. "No money. If I win, you come home with me and Bellamy."

Octavia, bent over the table, looks up through her bangs: _nice try_. "What makes you think I'll agree to that?"

 _Because you need him_ , Clarke thinks. _Because this can't be how the Blakes end._

She says, "If you win, you keep the van."

"Right," Octavia says. "Then you report it stolen and get me arrested."

"If I wanted you arrested I could have called the cops already," Clarke says. "Since you did steal it."

"No, because then you couldn't pretend to be the good guy. You need me to be the asshole here."

"The title's in the glove box," Clarke says, as Octavia's turn wraps up. "Mom put the car in my name after dad died. I'll sign it over to you. Can't steal a car you own."

"And you'd do that for me."

Clarke takes her shot, holding herself like she isn't nervous. The 11 ball teeters into the side pocket; 9 goes short by a millimeter.

Octavia studies the table.

"We used to be friends," Clarke says. "What happened?"

"You got obsessed with my brother," Octavia snaps. "You don't just get to _own_ everyone who catches your eye. Especially not if you ignore them as soon as someone you like better comes along."

Clarke breathes in. "I didn't know that's what I did." It feels dangerous to say it, to show any weakness now of all times: in a truck stop bar with a volatile girl who's determined to tear someone apart tonight, even if it's just herself. "I'm sorry. I've missed you. Even if I didn't act like it, I really valued your friendship."

"I don't need your friendship." Octavia taps the butt of her cue against the ground. "I don't need _anyone's_ friendship."

"Bullshit." Octavia ignores Clarke, takes her next shot. "You're not special, Octavia, you're not the magical first human being ever to be totally self-sufficient."

"What, Raven dumps you and now you think everyone is as pathetic and needy as you? Guess what: I'm not."

"Guess what? It did screw me up when Raven said she didn't want to be my friend. It sucked. Even if we work it out -- " Clarke sucks in a breath, because she can feel Raven's hug from just an hour ago settling around her shoulders. But she can feel the pillow under her cheek, too, Raven's bony elbows, _we're friends for one more week_. "I'm always going to know that she wanted to walk away. But that's not as bad as if she does it. So yeah, I'm not going to let you do that to Bellamy."

Octavia spends a long, ostentatious minute lining up a shot, before ultimately missing. But she's only got two balls left on the table.

Clarke waits. She knows better than to guess what a Blake is thinking from the face they're wearing.

"You really love him." It isn't nasty or teasing or happy. It just _is_.

"Yeah," Clarke says.

"Bellamy's got you. My dad has his family. Everybody's got somebody, and I have nobody. So don't tell me that I can't make it on my own, because that's my _only choice_."

"If you really thought that was true, you wouldn't have snuck away in the middle of the night," Clarke points out. "You don't sneak out unless you think someone is going to follow you."

"You have no idea what my life is like."

"You're right. I don't. But you know who does? You know who went through everything that you did?"

"He doesn't _want_ me," Octavia yells, and Clark's shot goes wide by a mile, cue scraping along felt. But Octavia isn't watching the game, doesn't register that it's her turn. "He's sending me _away_ , so what the hell does it matter if I leave first?"

"Does that sound like Bellamy to you?"

Octavia doesn't answer.

"Or does trying to get custody even though he's eighteen and broke, and feeling guilty as hell when he can't, and being too sad and angry to talk about it, does that sound like Bellamy?"

Octavia shuts her eyes.

"He's your brother. Whether you live in Seattle or San Diego or out in the woods somewhere eating bear meat. The only thing you can change is how much you hurt both of you."

Octavia still doesn't answer. She opens her eyes again, looks past Clarke, stares unfocused at the papered-over windows.

 _Wait_ , Clarke thinks, _wait_ \-- 

Octavia steps up to the table, easily and confidently lowers her cue, and lines up the shot.

She looks right at Clarke as the 8 ball rolls into the corner pocket.

There's a moment of complete silence. Octavia doesn't take her eyes off Clarke, but she doesn't move, either, still stretched out over the pool table like it isn't final yet, like she can still take it back.

One of the spectators Clarke had almost forgotten about says, "she lost?" Octavia's last opponent grumbles, "It doesn't count if she threw the match."

Octavia stands up and tosses her cue on the table, scattering the remaining balls.

"Let's go before someone cards us," she says, and follows Clarke out of the bar.

-

Clarke's first out the door, and gets the full force of Bellamy's expression: too anxious for hope or fear, for anything but the terror of existing.

Then she takes a step, and Octavia comes into view behind her, and Bellamy's face falls open.

"Bell," Clarke hears Octavia say, and she beats a hasty retreat across the parking lot to hide behind her dad's van. Should have got the keys from Octavia before they left the bar, she thinks, and does her best to give the Blakes privacy.

She sends a quick text to Raven, Miller, and Monty, to let them know that they found Octavia. She gets an immediate influx of replies: thumbs up emojis from Monty, a gif of Idris Elba nodding solemnly from Raven, the single character "k" from Miller, with a follow up text, "cool".

 _Quit getting all emotional on me_ , she texts Miller, then sends Monty a question.

Monty sends the number back right away, so Clarke types out a message before she can talk herself out of it: _We found Octavia. Thank you. I don't know what we'd have done without you. -Clarke_

She hits send and saves the number down as _John Murphy_. She doubts she'll ever use it again. But it feels appropriate.

Eavesdropping is hard when you're trying to not hear anything of substance. Clarke drifts closer and further away and closer again, trying to get a sense of whether the Blakes are ready to leave. There's a sound that might be Octavia crying. Or maybe Bellamy.

She heads back for the end of the parking lot, adrift. She wishes she were back at the hotel; she wishes she were back home. She wishes her mom were here; she wishes she were completely alone and could do whatever the hell she wanted.

She pulls her phone back up and opens her text thread with Wells. The last few texts on her feed make her smile -- selfies of Wells, bleary eyed at the airport at five in the morning, _I know Costa Rica is going to be worth it but why can't planes fly at a reasonable hour_.

She scrolls back up, smiles at the texts they sent each other to get through the boredom of graduation; their speculation about Wells' environmental sciences internship; Clarke's initial bloom of excitement about the road trip. It feels like an eternity ago, but the time stamp says it was only a week.

She types out, _Today was really rough._ Then, _I don't know if you'll get this. I don't even know if I want you to. Maybe you'll see it in a week and it won't matter. But. Yeah. I miss you. Have fun with the plants._

Then she stares up at the stars. Her dad liked stars. They're far enough from a big city that the view is good, but Clarke can't remember the names, can't remember what constellations she should be looking for in summertime. She leans against her dad's van and stares up until the stars blur together, a meaningless jumble of light, patterns without repetition, everything and nothing connected.

Her phone buzzes, jarring her out of a meditative state so hard that she doesn't understand what's happening, wonders why Murphy wants to call her before she realizes the text is from Wells:

 _Do you need to talk?_  
_I think my connection would suck_  
_And my roommate might kill me_  
_But I could try to Skype you if you need it_

Clarke laughs once, weak and watery. _I'm fine. Don't bug your roommate. We'll Skype later._

The sound of gravel scraping on asphalt makes her look up. Bellamy and Octavia approach, arms around each other's shoulders and leaning together to stay upright.

Bellamy holds the keys aloft. "You good to drive?"

Clarke nods. "I only had a sip of beer, I'm fine."

Bellamy frowns and pulls his hand back. "I meant are you tired. You were drinking?"

"Literally one sip. I'm fine."

Bellamy frowns at her, so Clarke makes her _not impressed with you_ face until he hands the keys over.

Octavia crawls into the backseat and falls asleep before Clarke has got them turned around and out of the parking lot. Bellamy climbs up from the back to the passenger seat. Clarke waits for him to buckle in before she turns onto the freeway.

"I think this is when I say thank you." The stripes of light moving through the car from passing street lamps turn Bellamy's face strange and unknowable.

"It was implied."

Bellamy reaches over and puts a hand on her thigh.

Clarke reaches down to cover his hand with one of hers before putting both hands back on the wheel.

Bellamy drifts off, his hand still on her leg when they pull into the Best Western.

-

Clarke's alarm goes off at eight, and she terminates it with extreme prejudice.

When she wakes up for real, the shower is running, the single crack of sunlight coming through the curtains is jabbing her straight in the eyes, and Bellamy has pushed her nearly all the way off the mattress.

"I can't believe you're even more of a bed-hog than Octavia." Clarke's voice is gravelly and uneven. She pushes Bellamy until he's contained to a fair and reasonable amount of bed. "How did you survive the last two nights?"

"Miller lets me cuddle." Bellamy sounds about half-awake.

"There is no way Miller is more cuddly than me."

"Are you listening to yourself? Of course he is." Bellamy yawns. "Wait, are you seriously competitive about cuddling?"

"Shut up, Bellamy." Clarke snuggles up behind Bellamy and buries her face between his shoulder blades. At least this way her back is to the window.

"Wow, you're right. Snuggling is so much better when I'm forced into it by someone who's mad at me and trying to prove a point."

"If you don't like it you shouldn't have dissed my cuddling skills."

"That's not even close to what happened, but okay." Bellamy turns his head, trying for a glimpse of Clarke and tickling her nose with his hair. "What time is it?"

"You're the one by the clock." Clarke reaches over him to grab her phone off the nightstand. There's six unread messages from Wells, which makes her smile into Bellamy's cotton-clad shoulder, plus a text from Raven saying that she's going on a bagel run and asking if Clarke and the Blakes want anything.

More importantly, there's her clock at the top of the screen.

"Shit. We've got five minutes to check out."

"Unless we're trying to get the wet and naked discount, I don't think we're going to pull that off."

"Why would you be naked?" Clarke sits up and swings her legs out of bed. She's stiff and sore everywhere; too little sleep in an uncomfortable position, and she is absolutely getting a bed to herself tonight if she has to kill someone for it.

"I was thinking about Octavia."

"You were thinking about your sister being wet and naked?"

"Jesus, would you leave already? Check us out, I'll stay here to let you back in."

"Cool. Text Raven to get me an onion bagel."

"You're so gross. I can't believe I slept with you."

Clarke pauses from tugging her jeans on over uncooperative pajama shorts to pat Bellamy on the head. "We can work on recapturing the romance in our relationship once the kids are out of the nest."

Bellamy blinks at her, his face making several half-expressions that twist her stomach. Miller was right; Clarke is terrible at jokes and should never make another one again.

"I mean -- " she starts, haltingly, and Bellamy shakes his head.

"I know. Go check out, okay? We'll be able to laugh about this someday," and she's not sure if he means _laugh about the horrible trauma my tiny fractured family is going through_ or _laugh about your inability to tell a joke_. Maybe both.

Clarke charges down the hallway, stopping at room 327 and pounding on the door, a distorted mirror image of last night. Monty answers, blinking at her like an owl, and Clarke can hear Miller in the background, "I don't care who's missing, tell them to fuck off!"

"I need your room keys," Clarke says. "Please tell me Raven didn't take one with her."

"I think I have them," Monty says, and disappears back into the room. Clarke tries to focus on beautiful mind pictures of forest meadows or serene lakes or whatever the hell relaxed people think about when they should be worrying.

Monty reappears with both room keys. Clarke all but snatches them out of his hand.

"By the way, you and Miller need to be up and packed as soon as humanly possible."

Monty blinks again. Clarke wonders if maybe he didn't stash some of that weed in his luggage after all. "I think Miller might kill me if I make him get up right now."

"Doubt it," Clarke says. "He likes you. Besides, you can blame it on me. That's what I'm here for."

"That's our fearless leader!" Monty calls after her, as Clarke runs down the hallway as fast as her flip flops will allow.

She gets checked out without incident, thankful for the laissez-faire California attitude where no one blinks an eye at a seventeen year old girl closing a business transaction without first brushing her hair or putting on a bra. By the time she gets back up to the third floor, the door to 327 is open again and she can hear Raven yelling at Miller to get his lazy ass up, so she proceeds to her room.

Bellamy is out of bed, looking better than any human has the right to look with pillow creases on his face and the half-dead aura of the sleep-deprived.

"Hey," he says. "I was going to start packing for you, but then I thought that would be weird if I touched your stuff while you weren't here, and you're mostly packed -- "

By that point, Clarke is across the room with her arms around Bellamy's waist.

"Hi," Bellamy says, a trifle awkward. "Is it the offer of manual labor that does it for you, or the respecting your boundaries? I want to know what I'm doing right."

Clarke huffs a breath of air against Bellamy's chest. "I'm happy, okay? Right this second. I'm happy."

"Cool." One of Bellamy's hands comes to rest against Clarke's back, between her shoulder blades, the other cradling her head; gentle, but keeping her close. "You should be happy more, you deserve it."

"As discussed, no one gets what they deserve."

"Maybe sometimes."

Clarke sighs and shuts her eyes.

"That looks nice," Octavia says from behind her. Clarke hadn't heard the shower turn off, the door open, but they must have. "Can I get in on that, or is this a two person thing?"

Clarke turns halfway, enough to see the scared-baby-deer look in Octavia's eyes, the tilt to her jaw like she isn't going to let fear chase her off.

"Get in here," Clarke says. "You're stupid brother is too muscular for good hugs."

"I would be offended, but I'm pretty sure that's a compliment," Bellamy says.

"Please don't talk about my brother's muscles while we're all touching," but Octavia steps closer, slowly at first and then in a rush, closing the distance before she loses her chance. Then she's throwing an arm around Clarke's waist, another around Bellamy's, and wow she's nearly as bony as Raven and this hug is awkward and uncomfortable and one of the best moment's of Clarke's life.

There's a loud banging on the door, Raven's voice calling out, "Open the door, you ugly ingrates, or I'm going to stick you with the raisin bagels!"

"Why did you buy raisin bagels in the first place?" Bellamy yells back over her head.

"In case you guys were acting like ugly ingrates!"

Clarke laughs so hard she has to sit down.

-

It is, by every standard Clarke can think of, a totally normal house. The walls are plain white stucco, with bright yellow trim around the roof and windows. The lawn is browning, but it's well trimmed, no overhanging bushes or gloomy trees obscuring the view. There isn't even a _Beware Of Dog_ sign.

There's no reason for them all to be sitting in the van across the street like they're afraid to get any closer, and yet. Here they are.

"Want us to come in with you?" Miller asks. "I make a great impression on parents."

"My mom is scared of you," Clarke says.

"So's my dad," Monty agrees.

"Exactly. Great impression. No one messes with Nathan Miller's friends."

"I'm good," Octavia says. "I can scare people on my own."

"Yeah, what was I thinking? You're way scarier than me, Little Blake. Octavia," Miller corrects himself.

"Little Blake is fine," Octavia blurts out, and hurls herself out of her seat to the back row, to hug Miller.

Monty pats her on the back, and she laughs and throws an arm around him, too. Clarke watches them in the rear view mirror and feels her heart rise up into her throat.

"Stay in touch, okay?" Monty asks. "I need to know all the cool spots to hang out in San Diego so I can impress my CalTech friends."

"I don't think hanging out with high schoolers is impressive to college kids," Octavia says.

"Whatever. You're cool."

"Hell yeah, I am." Octavia pulls away from the boys.

"Get over here, Little Blake," Raven says, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her into a hug. "You haven't seen the last of me. I still owe you for that shit you pulled keeping me up last night."

"Yeah, you can _try_ to get revenge," Octavia says, bravado meeting bravado.

She pulls away from Raven and opens the door.

For a split second, her eyes lock with Clarke's in the rearview mirror. She's pale as a ghost and looks far younger than sixteen.

Then her lips quirk, and she nods at Clarke.

Clarke nods back.

"Bell, you coming or what!" Octavia launches herself out of the car.

"Jesus, you're going to kill me!" Bellamy complains, getting out of the passenger seat. "Would you slow down?"

"Never!" Octavia yells, sounding for all the world like she's starting off on an adventure she can't wait to tackle. She really is a great actress.

Clarke rolls the window down. "Go easy on Bellamy, he's an old man. His heart can't take you whippersnappers running around."

"Deal with it!" Octavia flips them off merrily and dashes across the street, Bellamy following several feet behind with her luggage.

The door to the house opens, and a man steps out. He's pudgy and starting to lose his hair. If Clarke passed him in the supermarket, she'd file him away as _someone's dad_ without taking a second look at him.

Of course, he is someone's dad.

She can't hear the conversation from the van, but she can see the way he tries to greet Octavia, the way she pushes past him and into the house. Bellamy is the one who stops, shakes his hand and -- Clarke doesn't need to hear his voice or see his face to know -- apologizes for Octavia.

"Think they'll be okay?" Miller asks.

"Yeah," Clarke says. "I think so."

They sit there for several more minutes, the Beach Boys giving way to commercials for car dealerships, before Bellamy leaves the house, slower and older than he'd entered it.

"Want to drive?" Clarke asks, making it count for ten other questions she can't ask right now: _are you okay; what will you do now; where are we supposed to go._

"Fuck, no," Bellamy says, and sounds like himself. "Let's get out of here before someone tows this ugly piece of junk."

"Hey," Clarke says, running a hand over the dashboard as she starts the engine back up. "Don't diss my van. My van is awesome. I'm going to take it to school with me next year and everyone is going to be so jealous."

"Sure they will," Bellamy says. "Hey, at least we know what to do for next summer's road trip."

"Yeah?" Clarke asks, looking at Bellamy quickly, and then at Raven in the rearview mirror. Raven looks -- not excited. But thoughtful. "Seattle to New Haven?"

"Long fucking drive," Miller says. "There's two thousand miles of nothing but corn fields."

"That's why we need your pretty face along for the ride," Bellamy says. "Give us something nice to look at."

"Nice try, I'm not sharing a bed with you again."

"Two thousand miles of corn sounds cool," Monty says. "Like a horror movie. I'm in."

"I'm in, too," Raven says, sounding like she's surprising herself. "I mean, I'll have to get back out to Massachusetts after next summer somehow."

Clarke has to clear her throat. "Yeah, exactly. And you don't want to miss whatever shitty corn-themed tourist traps Miller drags us all to."

"Can I bring my weed on the next trip?"

"NO," Clarke and Bellamy answer.

"It was worth a shot," Monty asks.

"Any chance those two chill out in college?" Miller asks, _sotto voce_.

"Are you kidding?" Raven asks. "Clarke and Bellamy are a force of nature. They're never going to change." She sounds sincere when she adds, "thankfully."

"I'll drink to that."

"MONTY."

"It's an expression!"

"You know what, let's go to the beach," Miller says. "I think we've all earned a thousand years on the beach."

"No argument here," Clarke says. "Bellamy, directions?"

"Got you covered," Bellamy says, and guides her the rest of the way.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic you can [reblog it on tumblr](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/161831019195/the-more-we-move-ahead-the-more-were-stuck-in).


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